Empowering Teachers and Students: The Impact of Embedding Formative Assessment

The Embedding Formative Assessment programme has provided a platform for teachers at one specialist provision to develop their practice “in a non-threatening way” leading to a “substantial impact” on student outcomes.

SSAT’s flagship programme was implemented at Catcote Academy – part of the Hartlepool Aspire Multi-Academy Trust – between 2022 and 2024 and the legacy of the initiative lives on.

The 218 students at Catcote are aged 11 to 19 and have a wide range of SEND. All have Education, Health and Care Plans, with needs that range from moderate to profound multiple learning difficulties, autism, communication needs, and social and emotional difficulties; 75% are eligible for Pupil Premium.

The school champions their students’ many strengths and abilities and is focused on preparing them for “a meaningful future by promoting independence, resilience and self-belief”.

Deputy headteacher Anne Johnson explained: “Our students have a plethora of additional needs that makes life more difficult, however, we have high aspirations for all, and we passionately want our students to be able to live their best adult lives.”

The academy operates a system based on pathways that are defined by learning characteristics and the profile of need. The three broad pathways are:

• Red for more formal learners with moderate learning difficulties and relatively good communication ability. On entry, students are working between year 1 and 2 cognitive ability.
• Blue for learners with severe learning difficulties often working at reception level on entry. The learning is very project-based in this pathway, focusing on development skills as well as cognitive ability.
• Yellow for learners with complex learning and disabilities (CLD), including those with autism and profound multiple learning difficulties for whom verbal communication is difficult.

The Catcote curriculum for red pathway learners is delivered in six-week blocks which is backwards planned and has clear sequential learning aims but provides teachers with the autonomy to deliver effective lessons that meet the profile of needs of their students. Each class consists of 10 to 12 students with a pastoral team of a teacher and two learning support assistants.

A key challenge is that many students have “spiky profiles”, meaning they can be working at very different levels in different areas. Reading ages and processing difficulties can prevent students from engaging with traditional forms of written feedback.

The adoption of EFA was seen as a positive step to develop teaching practice further in a non-threatening way and improve outcomes for students. Ofsted also gave this work further impetus after its visit in 2020, when the new curriculum pathways and the school’s use of assessment were identified as a focus for the next inspection.

The EFA programme builds on more than 20 years of research into formative assessment by Professor Dylan Wiliam and Siobhán Leahy. It improves teaching and learning across a school by supporting teachers to trial and refine a range of formative assessment techniques.

And this was another goal for Ms Johnson – giving the teachers autonomy to develop assessment practices. She explained: “EFA was a platform for teachers to develop their practice in a non-threatening way that had a positive impact on student outcomes.”

A key to achieving this was the EFA’s Teacher Learner Communities (TLCs), which bring together teaching staff to work in groups to discuss practice, plan implementation of the different assessment techniques, and to observe one another in the classroom.

Two TLCs at Catcote involved up to 10 teachers each. Crucially, the TLC facilitators were not senior leaders – but teachers. One of the facilitators was Charlotte Carter, a pastoral teacher who also teaches a lot of the maths curriculum and has experience teaching across the pathways, including key stage 5.

Ms Carter identified the “safe” environment of the TLCs as a key factor: “It enabled staff development in a safe space where you could be open and honest. You try this technique, come back and reflect, and if it went disastrously wrong – that’s okay, because we’re all here to help each other. Very much we were learning from each other, which I found very powerful.

“The TLCs were CPD you looked forward to. You thought, I can’t wait to hear about what went well for people and we were building each other up. It was celebratory and I think this got a lot of buy-in.”

Across the two years of the programme, teachers tested lots of different EFA techniques, adapting them for their students’ needs. This eventually led to the creation of a Catcote teacher toolkit.

Ms Carter continued: “We had to be adaptive and creative in how we could tweak things to suit our setting, but I definitely think there is scope for EFA to be really beneficial for SEND schools. We’ve massively benefited.

“We have the teacher toolkit in classrooms now – it’s a box and it has resources such as whiteboards, pens, RAG cards, true/false cards – that support whole class participation and facilitate the teacher constantly assessing students’ understanding, enabling teachers to adapt their teaching as needed”.

Given the low reading age of many students, the EFA techniques that worked best were the visual ones. The students also responded well to the consistency of adapted approaches created in classrooms.

Ms Carter continued: “I know that in my lessons, I’ve got much less dysregulation because students know the routines, they know the techniques, they know what’s coming.

“They know if they have me, the mini-whiteboards are out before we even start the lesson because they know we’re going to be using them at some point.”

Ms Carter described more generally the impact of EFA on her own practice: “It has made me reflect in such a purposeful way. My lessons became more meaningful. Every interaction has a purpose. There was a lot more focus on the why more than the how. Why am I doing this? What am I aiming to get out of this?”

In her classroom, Ms Carter tried out a range of techniques including mini-whiteboards, You do-I do, Show me, RAG cards, Find it & Fix it among others. She added: “I think mini-whiteboards are a very underused tool. I personally use them every lesson. They are cost-effective and take minimal time to prepare, and teachers obtain whole class feedback which facilitates students showing their understanding rather than just explaining – especially working in SEND as a lot of our students struggle to articulate.”

The TLC approach has been that effective that Catcote has continued to use it within teacher professional development meetings and training in red pathway and has also expanded across all pathway teams and the post-19 specialist provision sites, although the formal EFA programme has ended.

Ms Carter added: “We are now focusing on areas that we feel need development including assessment techniques but also other approaches such as collaborative learning techniques.”

Ms Johnson also recognises the “safe space” that the programme created for teachers to develop their practice: “It was vital that the sessions were not led by the SLT so that all teachers felt that their contribution is valued. I provided support for the teachers leading the TLCs, but we used it as a platform for staff to feel secure in developing their practice in a positive coaching culture.

“The teachers wanted to learn from one another and as we worked through the EFA, we invested in members of staff to backfill teaching staff so that they could observe each other, with the focus and pairings alternating throughout this time.

“We have radically changed the curriculum and raised expectations over the last five years and the implementation of the TLCs as part of the EFA platform three years ago provided us with a positive structure to achieve this.”

Consistent in-class assessment has become the norm at the academy and Ms Johnson describes how “99% of teacher time outside of lessons is now spent on planning rather than marking or assessment”.
She added: “The TLCs have really shown that we are a professional body of staff, and we can learn from each other and share our positive practice.”

Ms Carter concluded: “I just think as a whole, it’s probably been one of the most impactful and beneficial CPD programmes I’ve ever done. It’s really helped me to develop my confidence as a teacher and my classroom practice.

“Assessment for learning has now become embedded and it is just part of the positive culture across the academy. I think to change a culture is really difficult, but the implementation of the EFA supported staff development following positive curriculum changes. It’s changed the attitude towards effective teaching and learning and I think that is so powerful.
“As a result, we now have students who are exceeding progress and attaining results that they never thought possible.”