Changes to the Key Stage Assessment System

[Lauren]

Hi,

This post is to let you know about some of the changes that we're making to the Tapestry Key Stage assessment system in preparation for the new term starting.

The system was released around this time last year and since then, we've received lots of really positive feedback! One thing that has come up a few times however, is that assessments made from the summative and formative assessment screens are taking priority over assessments made as part of observations. This is happening even when the observations are made later on in the term than the formative/summative assessments. 

We completely agree with those of you who said the most recent assessment should be the one that shows up for a child. Consequently, we are releasing an update to Tapestry for the start of this academic year that will make that change. This will affect previously made assessments, so rather than you having to go back through all of last year's data to make sure all of your assessments have been taken into account, they will appear automatically.

As part of making that change, we've added a new feature. Now, whenever you add a new summative or formative assessment, an observation (or several) will automatically appear in your observations list. This will allow you to see a full history of the assessments you've made across a period and means that you'll have the opportunity to add notes and media to any summative/formative assessment you make.

Here is an example of what those automatically generated observations might look like:

The first two in the list have been created from a formative assessment which was made for a group of children. You can see that the first obs in the list is for the children who were assessed in the selected statements as 'Working At' and the second one is for the children who were assessed in the same statements as 'Working Towards' (1). 

The third observation in the list has been created from a summative assessment. The start of the title (2) shows you whether it was a formative assessment or if it was a change made to a summative assessment.

All of these automatically generated observations are set by default as 'Staff View Only' (3). This means that only staff will be able to see them but they will contribute towards any analysis screens you use. If you would like to change that status though you can! You just need to edit them in the way you would any other observation; either by using the cog or tick box on the right hand side of the obs entry on that page, or by clicking on the 'Edit' button and changing the status from inside the observation. 

The other thing I'd like to point out is that they will all have a tag on them to indicate that they have been generated by snapshots (4). If you choose to make observations with that tag visible to relatives, the tag will be visible to them too. 


We know that you won't necessarily always want to see those 'staff view only' observations so we have also updated the page filters to make it easier for you to say which observation status you would like to see. 

So that's it! If you have any feedback for us please do let us know!