Assessment, Tracking & Reporting
How do we know what pupils have learned, and what they are ready to learn next?
At Sikh Heritage Girls School, assessment helps us understand what pupils know, where their understanding is secure and what they need to learn next. We are academically ambitious and expect girls to attain highly, but assessment exists to support learning rather than become the purpose of it.
We are explicit about Goodhart’s Law: when a measure becomes the target, it can stop being a useful measure. Test results matter, but we will not narrow the curriculum, teach to a test or mistake a score for the whole child.
SHGS is not academically selective, yet a large proportion of our pupils achieve at greater depth in English and mathematics. We are proud of strong outcomes, but particularly value the knowledge, independence and quality of thinking that sit behind them.
Assessment and Benchmarking
Teachers assess pupils continually through their written work, discussion, questioning and practical learning. This allows misconceptions to be addressed quickly and helps teachers decide when pupils need further teaching, additional practice or greater challenge.
Alongside this everyday assessment, pupils complete Quest assessments three times each year in line with our Assessment Policy. These provide external benchmarking and help us track attainment and progress over time.
No single test determines our judgement of a pupil. Assessment information is considered alongside the much richer evidence teachers gather from what girls can explain, apply and produce independently.
Partnership with Parents
Parents are invited to a progress meeting every half term: six meetings across the academic year. These regular conversations allow teachers and families to discuss attainment, progress, learning habits, areas of strength and clear next steps while there is still time to act on them.
Between formal meetings, communication remains proactive through Compass, our management information and communication portal, alongside direct contact with families when there is something important to celebrate, discuss or address.
Our termly showcases provide another opportunity for parents to see learning across the curriculum and celebrate achievements that cannot be captured by assessment data alone.
Our Approach
Good assessment should give teachers and families an accurate picture while protecting the breadth of a child’s education.
We therefore use assessment to identify, inform and challenge, not to label pupils or chase numbers. Strong attainment is important to us, but so are curiosity, communication, independence, creativity, practical competence and the ability to use knowledge well.
Full details are set out in the SHGS Assessment, Reporting and Academic Progress Policy.