Curriculum in action

At Broughton Hall School a model for assessing progress in personal, learning and thinking skills (PLTS) is emerging. It is driven by the desire to provide high-quality opportunities for challenge and progression in the learning modules. The school wants to extend pupils’ learning and achievements through a student-owned assessment approach aimed at enhancing motivation, starting by addressing the 'team workers' PLTS in particular. The principal aim is to enable young people to work confidently with others, adapting to different contexts and taking responsibility for their own role.

Process and practice

Pupils are asked to self-assess using the diamond and a red, amber, green rating.

The model for skills assessment developed at Broughton Hall is based on pupil self-assessment and is represented as a diamond of skills. Skills are grouped under headings based on the bullets relating to team workers in the PLTS framework. Within each of these areas five sub-skills are identified. Under one of the headings 'collaborate with others towards common goals' the sub-skills are: solving personality clashes, including everyone, encouraging others, working with friends and working with others.

The sub-skills in the diamond are not arranged in any hierarchical order, as the school believes that progression in these skills is not simply linear. When introducing the diamond in class, teachers talk through each segment with the pupils, explaining the skills in more detail. Pupils are asked to self-assess using the diamond and a red, amber, green rating as follows:

• red – no skill evidenced
• amber – some skill evidenced
• green – skill evidenced.

Pupils are encouraged to talk to their peers to discuss and verify their self-assessments. Progression is not seen as emerging from the diamond model but from the challenge built into the teaching modules. In this model, it is the process and practice that is assessed by the pupils themselves, verified by their peers and with additional evidence from their teachers. The prime role of the teacher is to provide the appropriate context, content and opportunities for the skills development to take place.

Positive reflection

During the self-assessment discussion, pupils are able to articulate their thoughts about the process, the evidence they have drawn on in making their self-assessment, and what further evidence they might require to consolidate their judgements. A pupil explained that this assessment method had enabled him to look back and reflect on how he could have tried to include more people in his discussions during practical lessons and possibly encourage others to play a more active role next time. One teacher commented, ‘Reporting progress should engage the child; their perceptions of, in this case, how they are improving as team workers. Integrating material from the PLTS framework into our diamond of skills model helps provide the evidence’.

Teachers also commented that although the year 7 reports, which identify skills, are longer, they are ‘quicker to write, because you know the child.’ During a parents’ consultation evening, one mother commented: ‘You have summed up my daughter. You know her as well as I do!’