St Mark’s is a state-integrated, full primary school in Christchurch with a roll of around 200.
The school has concentrated on building a model of inquiry based on learner-focused evaluation processes. They appreciate the opportunity that the removal of National Standards has given them to reconsider their assessment systems and processes.
The school identified their needs as the following:
- monitoring of progress
- summation of achievement at particular points in the year
- descriptions and illustrations of progressions of learning to be used by teachers and students
- a tool that will provide teachers and students with the "what next" for teaching and learning
- measurement of progress and achievement for analysis and teacher discussion
- consistent and easily understood assessment across the school.
They want to keep overall teacher judgments, understanding that no single source of information can accurately summarise a student’s achievement or progress. They do not want to keep the anniversary reporting from the National Standards, as it was complicated and very difficult to administer, and do not want to have to be in compliance mode with their assessment systems - they did not want to be using assessment to provide information to other stakeholders without using it for teaching and learning.
They want an easy to use assessment system that will support class-based assessment for learning, teacher inquiry, information sharing with parents and Boards of Trustees and wider data measurement and analysis when required.
