Training & Support
26 April 2022 - GL Assessment and the Fischer Family Trust (FFT) have announced a series of upgrades for three different school services ready for the 2022/23 academic year.
The Transition Service will allow secondary schools to display both CAT4 and Key Stage 2 SATs data on a single platform for the first time, enabling them to cross-reference the two datasets easily and giving them more choice and greater depth of information. Leveraging the combined power of CAT4 GCSE indicators and FFT estimates, the service provides teachers with GCSE estimates for their students. Previously only available for Years 7 and 8, the service will now also be available for all secondary year groups.
Enhancements to the GL / FFTValue-Added Service will allow independent and international schools to do even more with their CAT4 data. The service provides a value-added measure for each student in every subject in every school, benchmarked against national standards. From now on – for the first time – it will offer dashboards not only for I/GCSEs but also IB and A levels. All of which, the two organisations say, will enable schools and teachers to see where they are making the greatest impact.
Further functionality has also been added to FFT’s Aspire Pupil Tracking system for primary schools. Schools can now choose to add data from the Progress Test Series in English, maths and science, New Group Reading Test and New Group Spelling Test to their data dashboards – so teachers can compare DfE tests, GL data, teacher assessments and FFT estimates on one single system. Having this data in one place enables teachers to track all termly and end of year assessments quickly and easily, before then comparing the data points to FFT’s estimates or their own targets.
Crispin Chatterton, Director of Education at GL Assessment, said: “Schools have increasingly relied on CAT4 data in the absence of national exams because it is reliable, stable and unaffected by interruptions caused by the pandemic. These new enhancements not only provide continuity to schools by featuring CAT4 alongside KS2 SATs data in the Transition Service; the enhanced functionality of the Value-Added and Pupil Tracking services also gives them the ability to both see where they are adding value and assess pupil progress in ways they couldn’t before.”
Paul Charman, Managing Director at FFT, added: “Through our extended partnership, we will be able to improve the quality, range and speed of data offered to schools using FFT and GL Assessment tools. We think that the extension of our Transition Service to all secondary year groups will give schools a unique insight into the GCSE potential of pupils based on both CAT4 and Key Stage 2 tests. It’s great that primary schools will also benefit from the partnership with the ability to add GL Assessment tests into FFT Aspire’s free Pupil Tracking tool. This will make it easier to track progress and understand children’s learning as we move out of the pandemic.”
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