Assessment and pupil progress
 

Staff continuously assess students using a variety of methods to support planning challenging and ambitious lessons.

At CAS, we aim for all our pupils to “learn” and “achieve”, as well as develop their independence and life skills, so they can be successful after leaving CAS into further education or employment.

We have a range of assessment processes in place so that we can track our pupils’ progress over time and ensure that they are making the most progress that they can. 
All of our pupils are individuals, so they may make progress at different rates. We track their progress carefully and if any pupil is making “below expected progress” for their individual needs, we will intervene to give them additional support. This intervention may come in a variety of different ways.

We assess all pupils’ using a summative assessment for Spelling, Reading and Maths when they arrive, within their first half term. We also assess pupils using PIVATS for Social Awareness and Relationships. These baselines allow us to monitor progress against pupils’ starting point at CAS rather than against age related expectations (ARE) which are not appropriate for our pupils needs.

We then re-assess termly using these assessments to track progress throughout their learning journey at CAS.

We use formative assessment regularly to track all our pupils’ progress across all subjects over time through the Rising Stars Framework, using an electronic system called Classroom Monitor. This helps us identify areas/subjects where pupils can improve to do even better.
CAS bases data analysis and comparison of pupil data through the levels of expected progress within CASPA.

Using CASPA we compare our data analysis with other similar schools to gain a comparison, this is more relevant for our students than the mainstream data available.

Annual Pupil Progress for each year is analysed for the following groups:

• Whole school
• Key stages
• Individual year groups
• Individual class groups

In addition to this, progress is analysed for different diversity groups.

• Boys/girls
• Free school meals (FSM)
• Children Looked after (CLA)
• Pupil Premium
• English as an additional language (EAL)
• Autistic Spectrum Condition (ASC)
• Students from ethnic minority groups

Additionally, we track closely pupil progress in Years; 9, 11 and 13/14 so that we can spot any areas for improvement at an early stage and intervene as appropriate. This is to support a strong transition to their next stage.

As well as the data collected, we also use pupils work to identify attainment and track progress. This is done termly through work gathered from each subject in pupil’s spectrum file. These files give a picture of pupil progress over time through their work. We aim to further develop this through the introduction of “Evidence for Learning” which will allow the virtual capture of pupils work through photographs and videos.

Using our many assessment methods, pupils are set a target for Literacy and Numeracy, and a Personal target. Where appropriate these targets are linked to outcomes from their Education, Health Care plan (EHCP).  These targets are tracked by teachers each term. When targets are achieved, new targets are set and at the end of the year we analyse our pupils progress towards their targets.

Pupils progress is shared with parents in end of year reposts, at Parent’s evenings and in Annual Reviews.