Key Stage 3 Assessment – Years 7–9

Our Approach to Assessment

At Breckland School, assessment helps us understand what students know, what they understand and how well they can apply their learning.

Our approach combines assessment of foundational knowledge with opportunities for students to demonstrate deeper understanding through classwork, skills and extended writing. This gives us a more complete picture of progress and helps teachers identify what students need to learn next.

Foundational Knowledge Assessments

Students in Years 7–9 complete two low-stakes knowledge assessments each year.

These assessments are:

• consistent across subjects and carefully mapped to the curriculum;
• designed to assess recall, comprehension and application;
• used to identify strengths, gaps and misconceptions; 
• designed to support long-term retention, with key knowledge revisited over time.

The purpose is not simply to generate a score. Assessment information helps teachers decide what needs to be revisited, practised or taught differently.

What Happens After an Assessment?

Following each assessment, we use Question-Level Analysis (QLA) to look closely at students’ responses.

This allows teachers to identify precisely which areas of knowledge are secure and where further support is required.

Teachers use this information to:

• revisit misconceptions;
• adapt future teaching;
• provide targeted practice and retrieval;
• inform homework and intervention; and
• celebrate areas of strength.

Parents will receive QLA information following formal assessment points, providing a clearer picture of their child’s strengths and areas for development.

Assessing Understanding Through Extended Writing

Knowledge is important, but remembering information does not always demonstrate deeper understanding.

Alongside knowledge assessments, every subject assesses appropriate extended written work at least once within each 12-week period.

This provides students with regular opportunities to explain, analyse, evaluate, justify and communicate their thinking using subject-specific knowledge and vocabulary.

Students retain evidence of this assessed work, allowing teachers to monitor how the quality, quantity and independence of their writing develops over time.

Feedback and Improvement

Students receive meaningful feedback and opportunities to act upon it.

Feedback may be written, verbal or delivered through whole-class feedback and modelling. Students are encouraged to correct misconceptions, improve their work and understand their next steps.

Assessment therefore becomes part of an ongoing cycle:

Teach → Assess → Identify Gaps → Feedback → Improve → Revisit

How Will Parents Know How Their Child Is Progressing?

We want parents to receive information that is clear, useful and meaningful.

Parents will receive information through:

• Question-Level Analysis following formal knowledge assessments;
• school reporting and BIG Academic Checks;
• Parents’ Evenings; to explore wider knowledge of classwork, extended writing and progress over time.

Importantly, a student’s progress will never be judged from one test alone.

Teachers consider knowledge assessments alongside extended writing, skills, classwork and professional judgement to provide a balanced picture of progress.

Preparing for GCSE Success

Our approach begins preparing students for GCSE and beyond from Year 7.

As students progress through the school, we expect them to know more, understand more, write more effectively and work with increasing independence.

Regular extended writing is particularly important. It gradually develops the quality, quantity and stamina students need to produce sustained independent responses under examination conditions.

Our goal

Every student should know what they know, understand what they need to improve and develop the knowledge, skills, independence and stamina needed to succeed at GCSE and beyond.

Our Academic Checks provide families with an overview of their child’s achievement and progress in each subject that they study, as well as information on their effort, behaviour and home learning. Over the course of the academic year families will receive three academic checks (two for those with children in Year 11) to update on their child’s achievement and progress.

This information is available for parents and carers to view via Go4Schools. Go4Schools is an online reporting system that allows you to see home learning information, regular assessment data as well as reports The assessment information on your child’s Go4Schools page is kept live and up-to-date.

The school uses the Arbor App for attendance, behaviour, detentions and timetables.

Families will also have the opportunity to discuss their child’s progress at parents’ evenings.