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Welsh Schools

Curriculum for Excellence Assessment Frameworks

B Squared has worked with schools in North Lanarkshire to create products to support evidencing of the CfE experiences and outcomes (Es & Os) and the tracking of CfE assessment benchmarks and pre-early level milestones.

Scottish Schools have successfully used B Squared products since 2001. After Education Scotland’s (Foghlam Alba) formation in 2011, schools began to implement the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE). Designed to achieve a transformation in early learning and childcare (ELC), broad general education (BGE) and the senior phase, the CfE aims to help children and young people gain the knowledge, skills and attributes needed for life in the 21st century, including skills for learning, life and work. Its purpose is summed up as helping children and young people to develop the “four capacities” and become successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors—getting it right for every child (GIRFEC).

Teacher Assessment

Steps to Excellence

Using the experience and expertise of the teaching body at the two educational settings, we designed an assessment framework based on the CfE. The framework allows staff to use a common language of achievement throughout a child’s schooling. Teachers use this to support their robust assessment judgements and report on curriculum level achievement. Reinforced by a range of powerful reporting tools, this framework enables schools to represent detailed progress and achievement information to pupils, parents, staff, governors, local authorities and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education (HMIE). Steps to Excellence breaks down the content from the eight curriculum areas:

  • expressive arts
  • health and wellbeing
  • languages
  • mathematics
  • religious and moral studies
  • sciences
  • social studies
  • technologies

Steps to Excellence identifies success criteria to help learners achieve the benchmarks for each of the five curriculum levels:

  • early level
  • first level
  • second level
  • third level
  • fourth level

Steps to Excellence also identifies success criteria to help learners with complex additional support needs (ASN) achieve the pre-early level milestones for:

  • foundation skills
  • literacy and English
  • numeracy and mathematics

Want to learn more about our products for schools in Scotland?

Arrange a FREE online meeting to find out how our assessment frameworks works with the Curriculum for Excellence

Evidence of Learning

Evisense

Staff from educational, residential, therapeutic, and psychological teams gather evidence of a child’s holistic development in a range of formats (photo, audio, video, etc.). This is uploaded to Evisense and shared with the appropriate members of staff, family and peers. Designed to help educators record and highlight the achievements of pupils, Evisense creates a portfolio of a child's educational journey through the CfE.

Evidence of accomplished Es & Os can be automatically shared with parents, enabling them to engage their children about the day’s learning and consolidate the knowledge and understanding gained. If permissions are granted, parents can also upload evidence of children’s domestic achievements too. This can help staff to engage less communicative pupils about their evening, weekends and holidays.

Evisense can also be used to help teachers to moderate student’s work, as evidence can be tagged with a subject and level. This allows staff to look at the range of, for example, First level writing across the school and make collective decisions together.

With added functionality for schools in Scotland, Evisense allows teachers and assistants to tag different pieces of evidence with one of the eight SHANARRI wellbeing indicators (safe, healthy, achieving, nurtured, active, respected, responsible, and included) or as an aspect of the learner’s Developing the Young Workforce (DYW) accomplishments. Once tagged, these posts can be filtered and then viewed together in order to represent either the pupil’s successes within each area or to allow the school to showcase the provision they are delivering.
About our Contributors

Firpark Secondary School

A North Lanarkshire school in Motherwell that works with pupils for pupils aged 12–18 who have a wide range of additional support needs.

Project lead:       Lindsay Ireland
Headteacher:    John Morley

Redburn School

A North Lanarkshire school in Cumbernauld that works with pupils aged 5–18 who have a wide range of complex learning and physical difficulties.

Project lead:       Lisa Galfredi
Headteacher:    Nicola Lavery

Want to learn more about our products for schools in Scotland?

Arrange a FREE online meeting to find out how our assessment frameworks works with the Curriculum for Excellence