Assessment at St Gregory’s

Key Stage 3

At St Gregory’s we have been working hard to make our reporting system more comprehensive and encourage student aspiration. We have consulted with parents, carers, students and teachers and listened to the requests for a simpler form of reporting.

The new system will work on minimum target grades ensuring that students can always achieve at a higher level. Our aim is to further enhance the quality of teaching, learning and assessment so that our students make outstanding progress and have a strong foundation for achieving success at GCSE and A Level. We will provide Minimum Estimated Grades to give realistic goals, whilst encouraging students to achieve at a higher level with opportunities for stretch and challenge.

In line with best practice we will report to parents and carers four times a year.  This will consist of four snapshot reports and one Parents’ Evening.  A snapshot report will give parents and carers the student’s minimum estimated grade for each subject, and their teacher’s informed assessment of your child’s progress towards their minimum estimated grades and records if they are working above, on or below these.

These grades have been devised to complement the new GCSE grades but do not give predictions for a student at GCSE.

Year 7 Grades will be from 0 to 5

Year 8 Grades will be from 0 to 7

Year 9 Grades will be from 0 to 9

Key Stage 4

New specifications are now in place for all GCSE subjects. They are all graded on the 1 – 9 scale – see OfQual for more details.

Groupings

At Key Stage 3 students are taught in mixed ability classes for most subjects. Setting is used in Maths for Years 7, 8 and 9. English will have independent groupings in Year 9, and Science in Years 8 and 9. All other subjects will be studied in mixed ability tutor groups.

At Key Stage 4 Maths and English have complete freedom to set students by ability in their subject. Other subjects use a combination of mixed ability and setting, depending on options groups.