Baseline Assessment and Progression in History by Jonathan Stenner (Classroom Resources)

In the next two years all history departments will need to show that students are making progress and this will have to be based on statistical evidence, rather than on suppositions. This resource contains a baseline assessment that can be used to ascertain at what level a student is operating at the beginning of Year 7, based on the most popular units with junior and primary schools. The test consists of 50 multiple choice questions and a piece of extended writing, which should allow each student to be assessed in about five minutes or less than two hours per class. Once the baseline assessment data has been collected, the policy document appended to the test shows how to use the data to plot student progress through the rest of Years 7-9, in a simple and easily understood way, requiring no statistical expertise. This resource is extremely adaptable and can easily be changed to fit your department’s individual practices and requirements. To facilitate this, the pack comes with a copy of the whole assessment on disk in MS Word format. Baseline Assessment and Progression in History employs a standard distribution or bell curve system to place students in levels: this assessment does not use criterion referencing. Information from the assessment can be used alongside or in conjunction with other records such as KS2 data and internally conducted literacy, numeracy or IQ tests. 25 photocopiable masters plus disk