Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency

Objective

Penpol Primary School, part of the Cornwall partnership, wanted to support pupils’ learning in PE by improving assessment and increasing parental involvement.

The starting point

Penpol Primary, which has over 300 pupils, is situated in an area of high deprivation in North Cornwall. Many children enter the school with severe social and emotional difficulties, but by the time pupils reach year 6 their behaviour and attitude are excellent, mainly due to intervention programmes involving a lot of sport.

At an annual general meeting and through a questionnaire, parents said they wanted more information about what their children were doing at school and, in particular, how they could help them. Staff also felt that they wanted to engage parents more in what their children were learning.

Penpol had a good reputation for competitive team sport but, from a class-based perspective, provision was not consistently strong. High quality outcomes were not addressed, and challenges to pupils were not written in accessible language. There were certainly no expectations for parents to be involved in assessment for learning activities. Provision for PE had been judged as very good by Ofsted in 2003 but the staff had since identified the need to raise standards. Lesson observations made before the investigation showed no evidence of teacher awareness of the high quality outcomes and no involvement of pupils in formal self-assessment activities.

Action

All staff were trained in using core tasks in September 2006 and January 2007. Parents were then informed about the use of core tasks in a series of ‘planning and assessment leaflets’, which focused clearly on high quality outcomes, presented pupils with challenges in clear language, and required pupils, teachers and parents to assess performances against progress in learning and applying skills. The leaflets also described skills development to raise parents’ awareness of their children’s progress and suggested activities that could be practised at home to complement the skills taught in PE lessons.

In school the pupils began peer and self-assessment. Younger pupils were supported by a teaching assistant. The information received back from parents was scrutinised to collect assessment information and to monitor signs of parental involvement in PE skill development. The PE coordinator then used this information as the basis for writing a PE self-evaluation form (SEF) which was in turn used to inform the school SEF.

Impact

Assessment and planning for PE by all teachers has improved hugely. All pupils are now assessed against specific level descriptors that build up into assessment profiles of their groups. This has helped the school to create a list of gifted and talented pupils and to identify those with special needs in PE and school sport.

Children looked forward to assessing their performance using ‘I can’ statements. Teachers were surprised by their accuracy and honesty: they generally did not simply say that they could do everything! 

Many parents have become actively involved in assessing their children using the descriptors in the leaflets. Feedback from parents of year 2 children showed how the pupils were demonstrating their new skills at home: ‘Laura showed her forward rolls and also managed backward rolls, discussed pulses and heartbeat. Laura has joined a gym club.’ Another parent described how her daughter came home and, inspired by a dance leaflet and her PE lesson, ‘…wrote a piece on the computer about Jack and the Beanstalk’. Several comments from both parents and pupils showed that the pupils understood that activity makes the heart beat faster. Pupils were also able to express their understanding: ‘I can sequence three movements’, ‘I can copy and repeat patterns’. Comments from year 6 pupils showed a particularly good understanding of dance: ‘I can create three movements showing a change in speed and level, direction and expression’ and ‘I can improve my work by working with others and changing points of contact.’

The new planning and assessment system has been sanctioned by visiting inspectors and recommended by the local authority for its innovation. A number of other local schools have now taken the idea onboard and the local sports network has adopted the system.

The PE coordinator is now extending the work by compiling a whole school tracking system for PE using average pupil scores, ranging from 1 to 35. In two years time it should be possible to accurately measure the ‘value-added’ progress of individuals, groups and classes.