November 2012

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! 

What should we expect of a primary subject leader?  With the new Ofsted framework now coming into effect, a new article by James Bowen on the TES website calls for Ofsted to be realistic about expectations placed on subject leaders in light of such a big change.

"We use On Track Maths as our whole school ‘catch up’ program for children who need intervention support. This is massively important in a school with a mastery approach where everyone moves on together. Without something as high quality and rigorous as On Track Maths in place, the whole mastery approach would be at risk of collapsing at any point." Read on to find out what else Walton-le-Dale Primary School have to say about our intervention resource, On Track Maths!

Join us on 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 are delighted to announce that a number of our resources have received awards in this year's Teach Primary Awards!

"A high-quality geography education should inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives.” (DfE, 2014) 

It is worth reminding ourselves of the first line of the National Curriculum and the power of curiosity and fascination that any geography teaching might include. How might we bring that about in geography? In this blog Anthony Barlow, one of the authors of Rising Stars: Geography discusses some ideas.