An Easy Way to Show Progress for Pupils working on the Milestones and Curriculum for Excellence (CFE)

Scottish Schools have been using B Squared products to show progress for pupils with SEN since 2001. After Education Scotland’s (Foghlam Alba) formation in 2011, schools began to implement the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), this included using Education Scotland’s own tracking system. 

Working in Partnership with Schools in Scotland

In 2015 Redburn School in North Lanarkshire were struggling to show the small steps of progress their comlex needs pupils made. The headteacher had spent a long time researching what schools used in Scotland and struggled to find a suitable solution. They had to look at what schools used in England. They purchased our Connecting Steps assessment software and our P Level assessment content and were able to show that their pupils were making progress.

This worked, but there were a number of differences between the Scottish and English education system. In 2016 we began to work in partnership with Redburn School and Fir Park Secondary School to develop assessment content for the Curriculum for Excellence (CFE). Over a 3 year period we went through a number of variations of our content due to the release of the Benchmarks, the Milestones and then the updated Milestones. As the guidance changed, we updated our assessment content.

Assessing Progress for Pupils with SEN with the Curriculum for Excellence

Pupils with SEN do make progress, but sometimes it is at a much lower rate. Schools want and need to show progress, they want to demonstrate the progress their pupils with SEN make. For the majority of pupils with SEN, the benchmarks are still too big, they need smaller steps to work through. Pupils also shouldn’t be working directly towards the benchmarks, they should be participating in a variety of learning opportunities that work towards a number of benchmarks. Our Steps 2 Excellence framework supports these smaller steps of progress and show pupils progressing towards a number of benchmarks.

Evidencing progress is a big part of the Curriculum for Excellence and this is why all our schools in Scotland use Connecting Steps and Evisense together. Connecting Steps assessment software helps teachers to show progress, plan next steps and gives the whole school picture around assessment and progress. Evisense is our easy to use evidence of learning platform where staff can capture and share evidence. The evidence can be linked to the statements within Connecting Steps, creating a strong link between evidence and assessment.

Assessing Progress within the Milestones

Education Scotland introduced the Milestones a number of years ago with Miletones for foundation skills, literacy and numeracy. In 2019, they updated the Milestones to include Health and Wellbeing and made a number of other changes. The Milestones are for pupils working below Early level and cover the important early developmental milestones.

It is important to evidence the progress pupils working within the Milestones make. These pupils aren’t producing written work, they will be reacting to stimulus, making decisions, playing etc. To evidence this progress and their achievements, you need to use photos and videos. Evisense, our evidence system makes collecting and sharing evidence easy.

Evidence Progress with SQA National Qualifications

All schools in Scotland who use Connecting Steps and Evisense can access our SQA National 1 to 6 content for free. A number of schools are using Evisense to evidence pupil’s achievements towards the SQA National qualifications. In a few clicks you can print out books of evidence for different courses or modules.