Close relationships between staff and students in small class sizes such as at TOPS are a key principle underpinning our approach to evaluation and assessment.
Through every lesson, learning opportunity and interaction, our expert practitioners harvest a wealth of knowledge which informs them about where each student is on their learning journey. They offer insightful advice and instruction on what each student can do to improve and progress their work, and maintain relevant, individually tailored support to enable them to achieve their goals.
We will be using the skills as set out in the Irish National Curriculum as a guide, but also looking at Skills Continua from around the world to support our staff in identifying the next critical steps in progression across all subject areas. These are also devised so that school leaders can make comparisons with nationally recognised standards.
This comparison enables our staff to identify areas of strength and take action to support any identified areas of need across the school a. Our educators also carefully moderate their professional assessment judgements with each other, using their in depth knowledge of each individual, gleaned through their time spent with the students. Our team use many forms of ongoing formative assessment, throughout each project and unit of study which enables them to make robust summative assessments. This negates the need to make our students endure non-contextual, formal written examination-style processes, such as SATs or end of year exams. These approaches truly are student centred by design.