Our Vision
At St Matthias, we design a high-quality, ambitious curriculum for all pupils. The school carefully monitors the progress of each pupil to ensure every child achieves their full potential and makes strong progress from their starting points.
Our curriculum is mapped against National Curriculum expectations. We use assessment effectively to inform teaching and learning, and to help pupils embed key concepts, use knowledge fluently and develop their understanding.
Making Learning Stick
Our focus is making learning stick through a robust monitoring and assessment cycle and clear retrieval practice. This ensures pupils don’t just learn content temporarily, but develop detailed knowledge and skills they can recall and apply confidently over time.
How We Assess
Daily Formative Assessment
Formative assessment is the day-to-day assessment to inform teaching on an ongoing basis. This means identifying pupils’ misconceptions early and being responsive to pupils’ needs. Teachers and support staff at St Matthias continuously monitor and evaluate children’s progress through:
- Questioning and discussion – checking understanding systematically
- Marking and feedback – providing specific, actionable guidance
- Observation – monitoring learning in real-time
- Adaptive teaching – identifying misunderstandings and adapting teaching as necessary to correct these
Summative Assessment
We use formal assessments at key points throughout the year, including:
- Reception Baseline Assessment
- Maths Arithmetic and Reasoning
- Reading Comprehension and Fluency
- GPS (Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling)
- Phonics screenings and Multiplication tests
- Retrieval practice across all curriculum areas
- Optional KS1 SATs
- KS2 SATs
Retrieval practise is woven throughout the learning journey. Our structured assessment approach provides clear evidence of children’s understanding:
- ‘Check Its’ – Reviewing key knowledge to ensure pupils remember what they’ve been taught
- ‘Beat Its’ – Applying learning with increasing confidence to demonstrate growing fluency
- ‘Prove Its’ – Demonstrating secure understanding through independent application
This focuses on the most important knowledge and concepts that pupils need to know, prioritising feedback, retrieval practice and assessment.
Tracking Progress
We track pupil attainment against curriculum expectations for each year group. These expectations are shared with staff, pupils and parents and referred to regularly to ensure clarity and consistency.
Our curriculum is coherently planned and sequenced so that pupils build knowledge and skills sequentially and cumulatively. Time is available within the curriculum for revisiting content and dealing with gaps in knowledge and skills.
Securing Strong Foundations
For primary-age pupils, the curriculum prioritises accurate and fluent word reading, spelling, handwriting and mathematics. We ensure pupils have the age-appropriate knowledge and skills they need to progress, including:
- Language and communication skills to access the full curriculum
- Accurate and fluent reading
- Compositional skills and accurate spelling
- Legible and fluent handwriting
- Mathematical knowledge
At St Matthias, prioritise ‘keeping up’ rather than ‘catching up’, quickly addressing any identified gaps in pupils’ knowledge.
Using Assessment to Support Achievement
Assessment information is carefully analysed during termly Pupil Progress Meetings. This ensures:
- Work is appropriately planned and differentiated
- Any gaps in pupils’ knowledge or skills are identified and tackled quickly
- Additional support or challenge is provided where needed
- All pupils make strong progress
We combine formative and summative assessment to get a fuller picture of pupils’ progress and make sure pupils have a deep understanding of content before moving on to the next topic.
Supporting All Pupils
We apply a holistic approach to tracking progress. It is important to consider more than just test results or termly assessments so we get a more complete picture of each pupil’s progress.
Staff know how to identify and remove barriers to achievement for their pupils through effective curriculum design, formative assessment and adapting their practice to meet pupils’ needs. Reasonable adjustments are well targeted and effective, focusing on pupils’ long-term success.
Pupil Involvement
Clear targets are set for improvement and shared with children. Pupils are encouraged to play an active part in assessing their own progress and setting targets, developing their independence as learners.
Sharing Information with Parents
We share assessment information through:
- Termly parents’ evenings discussing progress, achievements and next steps
- Annual written reports celebrating achievements and identifying development areas
- Regular communication about your child’s learning journey
Our Commitment
By maintaining high expectations and a responsive approach to assessment, we ensure every child at St Matthias is supported, challenged and encouraged to succeed. Whether through marking or times tables tests, all assessment opportunities help us support children to progress in their learning and prepare them exceptionally well for the next stage of their education.