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D and T: Assessment
Last updated: 18 May 2007
D: Assessment
D1: How important is formal assessment to curriculum planning, teaching, reporting to parents and assessing teachers' performance at each key stage in design and technology?
Formal assessment is at least very important to teaching at key stage 4 for 90 per cent of the design and technology subject leaders in our survey. About the same percentage see it as at least very important for reporting to parents at key stage 4 and almost as many feel that it is at least very important to curriculum planning at key stage 4. Fewer respondents consider formal assessment to be very important or essential for assessing teachers' performance.D2a: In design and technology, do you assign levels for key stage 3 pupils more frequently than at the end of the key stage?
Nearly all of the design and technology departments that took part in the questionnaire assign levels within key stage 3.
D2b: Do you use information on pupils' levels to analyse pupil progress in design and technology?
Of the departments that do assign levels within key stage 3, about two-thirds use the information to analyse pupil progress more than twice a year.D2c: If so, what does this analysis lead to?
Schools use the information mainly to make changes in planning/teaching. Just over a third use it to make changes in pupil groupings or for further analysis across subjects. Twenty per cent use it for other purposes.D3: When assigning grades or national curriculum levels to pupils' work, how do you maintain internal standards?
At key stage 3, the most popular means of standardising in design and technology is the use of school-based exemplar material. Design and technology departments are one of the highest users of school-based exemplar material at both key stages. At key stage 4, the most popular method for design and technology is the use of moderation meetings. Standardising meetings are used more often at key stage 4 than at key stage 3. A cross-marking system is used for standardisation by more than a third of schools at both key stages.At key stage 3, design and technology is among the lowest users of local authority exemplar material and at key stage 4 it is one of the highest users of exemplar material from elsewhere for standardisation purposes. It is also among the three subjects most likely to include an examiner/marker in the department.