Assessing Primary Writing provides you with one nationally standardised Comparative Judgement fiction writing assessment per year group per year. You also get an optional extra non-fiction writing assessment for Years 4 & 5. We also provide professional development webinars and teaching resources to help improve your pupils' writing over time.
Why are schools using us?
Speed
Our judging is a collaborative process which involves all teachers at a school participating in the judging of every year group. Working in this way, a typical primary school can judge an entire year group and create whole class feedback for that year group within an hour.
Accuracy
Using Comparative Judgement, teachers agree on Key Stage 2 writing grades 86% of the time, compared to 66% of the time when using the Teacher Assessment framework.
Validity
As all moderation judging is done anonymously by teachers working at other schools there is no possibility for bias based on school or pupil characteristics. All schools and all pupils are on a level playing field.
Comparative Judgement in 4 easy steps!
1We set the task, so everyone is writing against the same prompt.
2Upload your pupils’ scripts on our specially coded paper.
3Judge writing, comparing two pieces of writing on screen, side-by-side to determine which is best.
4Benchmark attainment and progress across your school, and nationally, with the information and statistics in your school’s individual report.
Here’s a summary of how it works
- There is one fiction writing assessment per year group per academic year, plus an optional extra non-fiction writing assessment for Years 4 & 5. View the full calendar here.
- We set the stimulus for the writing so that the conditions are standardised for all pupils. The fiction assessments use an image prompt, while the non-fiction assessments use a short text prompt.
- In each window you judge the work of your pupils as well as the work of pupils across the country. You never directly compare the results of your pupils with pupils from other schools. Rather, every 5th judgement is a moderation judgement where you compare the work of pupils from other schools.
- Once the national judging is complete, you will get a full PDF report. Each pupil will get three key pieces of information: a scaled score, a writing age, and an indicative KS2 grade. We provide you with full analysis of your school’s results and the national picture, including breakdowns by gender and pupil premium.
- Our progress reports track your pupils’ progress from Year 1 to Year 6 relative to other pupils in other schools.
- Alongside the judging windows you can take part in three automarked multiple-choice diagnostic tests that identify grammatical misconceptions. There is a baseline test in September followed by progress tests in January and June.
- The diagnostic tests are accompanied by a full online programme of CPD in teaching writing delivered via the Writing Hub.
Creative Writing Stimulus
Commissioned illustrations that bring out the best in children’s writing.
Your subscription includes
We support you every step of the way. We are online and happy to chat on the site or to talk you through any questions you have. Our dedicated support team will check all the writing you submit to ensure the process is smooth, secure and time efficient.
Benefits of Assessing Primary Writing
Nationally-standardised results
Access to 8 national writing windows. Last year every national window attracted over 1,100 schools and over 45,000 individual writing submissions.
High quality tasks
A mixture of fiction and non-fiction writing tasks. Our fiction stimuli are commissioned illustrations that bring out the best in children’s writing.
Granular measures of performance
With our scale & nationally standardised cohort we can report national grades for every year group (WTS, EXS, GDS), writing ages and scaled scores which allow you to measure pupil progress.
State of the art software
The leading Comparative Judgement platform worldwide combined with Optical Character Recognition sheets for pupils to write on. When you upload scanned sheets the pupil names magically disappear, but they will still be matched to your data.
Data you can trust
Every judge’s performance is recorded, and decisions made by inconsistent judges are removed from the results.
High quality reporting
Snapshot reports, progress reports and annual yearbooks allow you to celebrate the development of writing skills at your school.
Technical support
Technical support and training via chat 24 hours per day.
Professional development
After each assessment, we provide you with exemplar scripts from students across the country, which can be used in lessons or for CPD. Alongside our national writing windows we provide diagnostic progress tests and a series of professional development webinars focused on improving children’s writing.