Targets for individual student achievement

As part of day to day teaching, you will be giving learners written and oral short-term targets for improvement. There is more on this below.

In addition, older learners will have longer-term targets expressed as National Curriculum levels or GCSE grades. In secondary schools and the upper parts of many primary schools, learners are given regular information about how well they are progressing towards these targets. Sometimes teachers will 'level' individual pieces or units of work (though you should remember that, strictly speaking, a level can only apply across a major aspect of a learner's work in a particular subject) .There will also be an agreed process for turning formative assessment information into summative grades.

As an NQT you will either be given appropriate targets for each student or will need to decide on them. Practice varies from school to school, and there is a lot of advice and information available to schools to help with this process.

For example, the Fisher Family Trust, a charity working in education among other areas, records and analyses national curriculum test data across England over several years. This allows it to provide predictions for pupils' future achievement based on their test results so far. These predictions are widely used to guide target-setting. Some schools use the FFT predictions across all curriculum areas. Others modify these statistical predictions from CAT, FFT and PANDA data to take account of individual student performance, particularly in subjects less closely linked to the core subjects tested by National Curriculum Tests and CATs. Teachers are supported in this work by Heads of Department and by senior managers.

All this data will help you set benchmarks for your own class and set meaningful targets to improve attainment. Monitoring performance against these targets will help you predict future performance, spot where learners are beginning to struggle, and conversely where they may need additional challenges. There will be a senior manager within the school responsible for interpreting all the data available to the school, who will be able to help you develop your own understanding.

The Target Setting Process

Step	Action
Step 1	Plan to set the targets and inform the learner of the time and venue
Step 2	Negotiate the criteria for the assessment  and agree the targets
Step 3	Carry out the assessment using the criteria
Step 4	Review against the agreed targets
Step 5	Formally record the assessment and the extent to which the targets were achieved
Step 6	Plan to set the targets and inform the learner of the time and venue

 

Pupil progress tracking

Tracking learner progress is aimed at providing information to learners, parents and the school about how well the students are likely to do in formal assessments such as GCSE. It also ensures that underachievement is picked up quickly and addressed. Pupil progress will usually be reported and centrally recorded several times a year.

In secondary schools, departments are likely to have an agreed process for turning formative assessment data into a summative grade. Trialling and moderation will take place to ensure that all members of the department are making the same, reliable, judgments. Similar processes take place in primary schools where there is more than one class in a year group.

To teach successfully, you need to know:

• what pupil work generally looks like at each level in the subject
• how each individual student's current achievement compares with this and
• what to do to help each student achieve at a higher level.what pupil work generally 

Guidance on doing this will be available from your colleagues, and you'll find it becomes much easier as you go along.

This information will help you adjust your teaching to suit your students and to advise and guide them on what to do to improve and reach their targets.

Senior management and other colleagues, for example, heads of year or department, will be monitoring students' progress against the targets. They will be interested in seeing whether different groups are making similar progress, whether some individuals or groups are achieving significantly below their potential, and in patterns of achievement by gender and ethnicity. They will expect identified needs to be reflected in lessons. Your own class or groups will form part of this monitoring, and you should get feedback on their performance, with additional guidance and help in areas where it would be useful.

Setting targets with learners

While you and your pupils will be aiming for the overall achievement targets described above, you will also be feeding back information to your pupils on an everyday basis, and setting small, short-term targets. Doing this well requires skill and practice. Learners often complain that they are not really sure what is expected, and that they don't know how to improve.

SMART targeting - creating a meaningful focus for improvement

A process called SMART targeting can help. SMART stands for:

Specific

Measurable

Agreed and Achievable

Realistic

Timed, or put in a time frame

You should help your learners work on SMART targets. The focus can be anything appropriate, as long as the learner clearly understands it. It may be related to the learner's behaviour, it may be a general target relating to homework or class work, it may be subject specific, relating to the exam specification or to the scheme of work.

For example:

• behaviour: for the next five days I will arrive at my lessons on time
• general: in my next geography lesson, I will bring all equipment that I need and will remain on task without disrupting the others around me.
• subject specific: in my next piece of written work in English, I will not make a single mistake when using a full stop.

 

It is important not to fall into the trap of accepting vague targets when setting them with your learners. "I will improve my spelling" can seem a reasonable target when we're busy. But this lacks a time frame and a specific focus for improving spelling, so it is unlikely to have any impact on the learner. A far more effective target would have been, " Whenever a teacher marks a spelling as incorrect, I will look up the correct spelling, write it down and ensure that the next time I use the word it is spelled accurately. This is specific, set in a time frame and something that both the assessor and the learner can see is happening.

Peter, an experienced teacher