Progression & Assessment

Progression and Assessment (Key Stage 3): Progression simply means ‘getting better’. History teachers need models of what progression in history looks like but many contrasting models exist and lively debates continue.  All history teachers therefore need to know enough to understand those debates and join them. History teachers and history education researchers have traditions of defining and testing goals for students, debating how far these should relate to substantive knowledge and/or disciplinary thinking, researching typical routes pupils take towards them and working out optimal paths to help them get there more securely. Read more

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  • 'Assessing Pupil Progress'

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. England's Qualification and Curriculum Development Authority (QCDA) has been working on a new way of trying to support teachers in handling interim assessment during Key Stage 3. It is called Assessing Pupil Progress (APP). Jerome...

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  • A scaffold, not a cage: progression and progression models in history

    Article

    The need to understand ways of defining progression in history becomes ever more pressing in the face of a target-setting, assessment-driven regime which requires us to measure progress at every turn. We must defend our professional expertise in terms of measurable outcomes. Did we add value? Have our end of...

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  • Adventures in assessment

    Article

    In Teaching History 157, Assessment Edition, a number of different teachers shared the ways in which their departments were approaching the assessment and reporting of students’ progress in a ‘post-levels’ world. This article adds to those examples, first by illustrating how teachers from different schools in the Bristol area are...

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  • Assessment Without Levels

    Article

    The removal of level descriptions has generated some head-scratching, questions and conflict - especially when the adoption of a new whole school model does not seem to fit with recognised good practice for assessment and progression in history. Our FAQs guide will help to answer many of those frequently asked...

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  • Assessment after levels

    Article

    Ten years ago, two heads of department in contrasting schools presented a powerfully-argued case for resisting the use of level descriptions within their assessment regimes. Influenced both by research into the nature of children's historical thinking and by principles of assessment for learning, Sally Burnham and Geraint Brown argued that...

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  • Assessment and planning for progression at Key Stage 3

    Article

    The 2014 National Curriculum does not include an attainment target or any specified level against which you are expected to assess pupils' progress. The new attainment target says simply that: ‘By the end of each key stage, pupils are expected to know, apply and understand the matters, skills and processes...

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  • Assessment of students' uses of evidence

    Article

    Drawing on her research into students' evidential reasoning, Elisabeth Pickles explores the possibilities for how such reasoning might be assessed. Existing exam mark schemes focus too heavily on generic processes involved in the analysis of source material and insufficiently on the historical validity of reasoning and conclusions produced. Approaching the...

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  • Assessment without Level Descriptions

    Article

    Two heads of department in contrasting schools explain why they do not use Level Descriptions at all, other than at the very end of Key Stage 3. Influenced by ‘assessment for learning' principles, Sally Burnham and Geraint Brown develop a case for using assessment to help pupils grow in understanding...

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  • Building and assessing learner autonomy within the Key Stage 3 history classroom

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Oliver Knight is an experienced Advanced Skills Teacher who has taught in four different secondary schools, three of them multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-cultural and at least two wrestling with significant problems arising from social deprivation....

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  • Building meaningful models of progression

    Article

    Setting us free? Building meaningful models of progression for a ‘post-levels' world Alex Ford was thrilled by the prospect of freedom offered to history departments in England by the abolition of level descriptions within the National Curriculum. After analysing the range of competing purposes that the level  descriptions were previously...

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  • Creating a progression model for teaching historical perspectives in Key Stage 3

    Article

    Jacob Olivey set out to design enquiries which would enable his pupils to reconstruct, using evidence, the perspectives of people in the past. In this article he shares in detail the planning and outcomes of two enquiries: one for Year 7 and one for Year 8. Olivey offers a example...

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  • Creating controversy in the classroom: making progress with historical significance

    Article

    No longer is historical significance the ‘forgotten key element.’ Indeed, it is now being remembered at last – by politicians, telly-dons and the media in any case. Matthew Bradshaw suggests that the popular emphasis on significant events is wrong. Instead, we should be enabling our pupils to make their own...

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  • Cunning Plan 162: Transferring knowledge from Key Stage 3 to 4

    Article

    Planning to deliver the new GCSE specifications presents a challenge and an opportunity to any history department, whatever their previous specification. The sweep of history that students will now study at GCSE is much broader than ‘Modern World’ departments are used to; including a medieval or early modern depth study...

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  • Cunning Plan 167: teaching the industrial revolution

    Article

    ‘Disastrous and terrible.’ For Arnold Toynbee, the historian who gave us the phrase ‘industrial revolution’, these three words sum up the period of dramatic technological change that took place in Britain across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We may not habitually use Toynbee’s description in the classroom, but it is...

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  • Designing end-of-year exams: trials and tribulations

    Article

    Since the decline of the National Curriculum Level Descriptions, schools in England have been asked to design their own forms of assessment at Key Stage 3. This had led to a great deal of creativity, but also a number of challenges. In this article Matt Stanford reflects on his department’s...

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  • Developing independent learning with Year 7

    Article

    Jaya Carrier’s decision to focus on developing a more independent  approach to learning in history at Key Stage 3 was prompted by concerns about her A-level students. In seeking to establish secure foundations for students’ own historical research, Carrier first examined the assumptions of her colleagues and her students. She...

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  • Do's and Dont's in developing assessment practice

    Article

    Principles and practices to take forwardIn light of our experience since drafting our original plea for ‘Assessment without levels' and in the spirit of the new freedoms offered by the abolition of levels, we offer the series of principles and warnings set out in Figure 3. We hope that they...

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  • Effective essay introductions

    Article

    Struck by the dullness of some of her students’ essay introductions, Paula Worth reflected on the fact that she had never focused specifically on introductions. After surveying existing work by history teachers on essay structure in general and introductions in particular, she turns to the work of historians. Drawing on...

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  • Ensuring progression continues into GCSE: let's not do for our pupils with our plan of attack

    Article

    Dale Banham continues a theme explored by many other teacher-authors in recent years, how to ensure that progression does not just stop in Year 9, leaving pupils stagnant in key areas of historical learning before getting picked up again in Year 12. He produces a more thorough rationale and commentary...

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  • Here ends the lesson: shaping lesson conclusions

    Article

    Reflecting on her efforts to improve her trainee’s lesson conclusions, Paula Worth decided to brush up her own. A journey of self-evaluation led her to revisit the Cambridge Conclusions Project. Through its lens, she judged her own lesson conclusions wanting. Worth examines the way in which the final episode of...

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