School Meals
Many children take advantage of the good-value meals cooked in our own kitchen.
A statutory Reception baseline assessment (RBA) will be introduced from Autumn 2021. Currently, we administer a test at the end of KS1 – the DfE has said this means they are unable to give full credit to the important work that schools do between Reception and Year 2. The RBA is being introduced to change this, by providing an insight of where pupils are when they arrive at school and establishing a new starting point to measure the progress they make by the end of Year 6.
The existing KS1 national curriculum tests and teacher assessments will become non-statutory once the RBA is fully established – the earliest this can happen is from the 2022/2023 academic year.
The first thing to say about the Key Stage 1 tests is that your child may be completely unaware that they are taking them. We have flexibility in how we implement the tests and much of it will feel like a normal classroom day; our teachers will do their best to ensure that children are not at all concerned about the tests. To allow this, the tests do not need to be taken on a specific day, but can be throughout the month of May near the end of Year 2, with pupils either individually, in groups or all together as a class. There are six papers altogether across English and mathematics.
All the tests will be marked by teachers at our school to help us judge the attainment and progress of your child. The results will be reported to you, as part of a wider school report at the end of the school year.
Your child's score will be converted to a scaled score to allow it to be compared to others'. Scaled scores will normally range between 80 and 130. The scale will be set so that reaching a score of 100 will indicate that your child is working at the expected standard for the end of Key Stage 1. Higher scores indicate more advanced attainment, with lower scores suggesting that your child may need some additional support to catch up with his or her peers. Scores will be provided for reading and mathematics, with a single score for grammar, punctuation and spelling.
The MTC is now statutory for all Year 4 pupils registered at state-funded maintained schools, special schools or academies (including free schools) in England. The MTC is an online assessment designed to determine whether pupils are able to fluently recall their multiplication tables up to 12 through a set of 25 timed questions. A range of access arrangements will be available, but we will ensure the support given does not advantage or disadvantage individual pupils. Results will not be published in performance tables.
The tests take place during the first full teaching week of May each year (i.e. the week after Bank Holiday Monday) and in recent years have been spread across four days. We have some flexibility in how we organise pupils for the tests, but most of our children take the tests in their own classrooms. In some cases, individuals or small groups of children who are entitled to additional support, such as a reader or prompt, will take the tests in a separate room; we will contact you if we think this may apply to your child. Over the course of the week, there are six tests altogether covering the various areas of English and mathematics.
Following test completion, the tests will be sent to be marked by a central agency and then are returned shortly before the end of the summer term. Once the results are returned to us, they will be reported to you, as part of the end of year school report.
As for KS1 tests, your child's score will be converted to a scaled score to allow it to be compared to others'. Scaled scores will normally range between 80 and 130. The scale will be set so that reaching a score of 100 will indicate that your child is working at the expected standard for the end of Key Stage 2. Higher scores indicate more advanced attainment, with lower scores suggesting that your child may need some additional support to catch up with his or her peers. Scores will be provided for reading, mathematics, and grammar, punctuation and spelling.
Further details, including specifics on the format of both the Year 2 and Year 6 tests, can be read and downloaded from the government's website.
