Meeting educational aims for ALL pupils with one assessment system

Highfurlong is a maintained special school in Blackpool for pupils aged 2-19 with a wide range of special educational needs. These include complex medical conditions; physical disabilities; profound and multiple learning difficulties; speech, language and communication difficulties; moderate learning difficulties and autistic spectrum disorders. The school was purpose built in 2015 and is fully accessible for all pupils.

According to Deputy Headteacher, Jasmine Short, “Working with B Squared enables us to track progress for all our pupils, no matter the need or ability, under the same assessment umbrella. We know that pupils are being assessed in an area which is right for them and is up to date with current legislation and government guidance, as the company updates regularly and provides training. This approach also helps our teaching team, keeping consistency and expectations the same, and avoids using a range of different software.”

Track small steps of progress for complex pupils

“B Squared’s Connecting Steps assessment software allows us to track small steps for our complex pupils who need a bit more time to show progress. It is personalised to each pupil and they are not compared against each other or compared nationally. They have their own assessment pathway and the assessment descriptions provide clear next steps for teachers to work on.”

Using one assessment system saves time and money

“We can easily access each pupils’ progress. This saves us time and printing, as well as the cost of running multiple platforms to meet different students’ needs. It also saves training and teaching planning time, as we can bring up data quickly and clearly for meetings, parents evening and annual reviews.”

New analytics speeds up data analysis and target setting

“The new B Squared Analytics speeds up our analysis of pupil progress. It avoids long processes of data analysis using spreadsheets. It’s quick and easy to create reports and graphs that compare data to give a whole school picture. We can clearly see the progress our pupils are making. This also helps us to set short term targets to work towards EHCP outcomes.”

Helping our assessment processes to grow and improve

“We have a vast range of needs at our school and B Squared has an excellent range of frameworks which meet the needs of all our learners. We have worked with the team for many years and seen how they always strive to improve. We are excited to see the updates to Analytics and Evisense, both of which we believe will further improve teacher workload and our assessment processes.”  Jasmine Short, Deputy Headteacher, Highfurlong School.