August 2015

As Black History Month draws to a close, Hamish Baxter (Assistant Commisioning Editor at Rising Stars) discusses the importance of diversity in children's books and reading schemes. 

Let’s be honest how much time do we have for giving pupils quality feedback in History? The answer is usually very little as our attention is still firmly focused on raising standards in literacy and numeracy. 
Here are some ideas to ensure that even when you are short on time your feedback has the necessary impact to move learning forward.

Eye of newt and witches brew, Question Bank has an early halloween treat for you...

Join us on the third part of our journey with St Barnabas Church of England First and Middle School as we explore their use of our termly standardised assessment suites PiRA, PUMA, GAPS and NTS Assessments. St Barnabas also makes full use of MARK, our free online assessment and reporting tool trusted by over 6,000 schools.

The Reading Planet Tour is over but what a fantastic few weeks it was! We met Take a look at some pictures from the events which took place across the UK. 

Add your PiRA, PUMA and GAPS pupil test data into Aspire Pupil Tracking.  Standardised scores are then converted automatically, in real-time, to a DfE scaled score. This is the ‘common currency’ used by Aspire Pupil Tracking to compare PiRA, PUMA and GAPS results to other tests, TAs, targets and FFT’s own benchmark estimates.

Join us on the second part of our journey with St Barnabas Church of England First and Middle School as we explore their use of our termly standardised assessment suites PiRA, PUMA, GAPS and NTS Assessments. St Barnabas also makes full use of MARK, our free online assessment and reporting tool trusted by over 6,000 schools.

We recently spent some time at Churchfields Junior School to see in action how the teachers and students have been using their Franklin Watts and Wayland books. They’ve come up with an innovative way to integrate them into their classroom teaching, using them in their foundation subject lessons for Years 5 and 6.

In August, the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) released new guidelines for access arrangements which came into effect on the 1^st September.

Today is World Mental Health Day and to celebrate the importance of getting children talking about wellbeing and mental health we are giving you the chance to win a bundle of goodies for your school!