2. Identify your pupils starting points

You can’t measure progress until you know your student’s general ability in the areas of my Pyramid Progression: Skills, Knowledge & Creativity. I developed a simple exercise to do this that takes about an hour to do and I would do it at the beginning of each year.

 

Skills & Creativity assessment for EYFS or Key Stage 1 pupils; Show the class a photograph that is an imaginary starting point for a drawing. I like to show a mysterious door in a forest and ask: ‘Draw what do you think is behind this door.’ It could be a doorway into another world or favourite place or person. Lead them into possible ideas but don’t give them answers or let them copy. I inform them that I will be looking for original, imaginative ideas and also how well they can describe their idea using drawing. 

 

Skills & Creativity assessment for Key Stage 2: I give each one a small junk object collected from my shed or my oddment drawer in the kitchen. Things such as screws, bottle tops, curtain hooks, keys are excellent. I ask them to make a drawing from observation of this object in around 15-20 minutes. I will inform them that I want them to draw the object as accurately as they can, in the correct proportions and if possible, add shading. Next, I ask them to transform their drawing into an imaginary picture. I say they can rotate it, add things to it, make it into a scene or a character or even just an abstract pattern. I inform them I am going to be looking at their ability to come up with novel, original ideas. This is an adaptation of a Torrance Test which is the standard way of measuring creativity. I'm looking for the level of their drawing skills and their level of imagination.

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That is my baseline assessment complete! Note, you can simply look at pupils' sketchbooks or folders from the previous year if it's easier. You may also have transitionary data and summative reports from previous years which can all be used to assess the starting points across all three areas. Some teachers tell me they do a portrait project each year to assess pupils' starting points, but all this does is tell you how good they are at drawing faces. It doesn't give you other essential information about literacy or creativity. 

Next, I get everyone into a circle or group, and we celebrate and enjoy our pictures, commenting on what is most interesting and successful. As the teacher, I am looking for distinct assessment areas here. I can choose to share this information with the class or not, but I want to measure; drawing ability in terms of the level of skill, attention to detail or successful transference of their idea and their level of original, imaginative thinking. I make judgements about their work to the three assessment strands of working towards, working at or greater depth, ‘where working at’ is the expected standard of drawing for their age and being able to describe an idea that few other people have thought of in the room. (Sometimes, we can draw the same idea in different ways!)

The only other information I will need now for my baseline assessment is their reading age described as working towards, working at or working at a greater depth. This gives me vital information about pupils' ability to engage with the literacy elements of my curriculum. It will have taken about an hour to do the assessment and discuss/assess it in the group, but this now gives me three measurements of ability:

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1. Their general drawing ability described as working towards, working at or working at a 

greater depth.

2. Their level of creative imagination described as working towards, working at or working 

at a greater depth.

3. Their ability to access and describe their own and others’ artworks using verbal and 

written communication.

 

This last measurement can be used to measure the two curriculum attainment areas of knowledge and evaluation that we have outlined above. What you should find from doing this is that some pupils are very skilful at drawing, but not so imaginative. Some are imaginative but not so skilful and some are literate and articulate but not imaginative or skilful. In our current art education climate, it is usually the skilful ones who receive the most recognition, rather than the budding art critic or most imaginative ones.

 

3. Assess a broad range of art abilities over time, linked to content 

To be honest, it is fairly easy to spot who the most skilful artists are, you could probably do that without any formal assessment, but hopefully, you will be able to make more meaningful judgements such as: you work most successfully with your hands when making in three-dimensions, or you really performed well in our printmaking project. This is time-dependent of course, but if you judge everyone on their ability to draw or paint it is like saying you are no good at sport if you can’t play football. When making assessment judgements about making skills, always look for what they can do, as opposed to what they haven’t done. 

Our level of creativity is very dependent on how much we use it, so if your curriculum only has only one creative activity per term; to come up with four ideas for a monster, then you aren’t really developing it. Try to devise lots of quick, creative exercises. Imagination needs feeding! In this way, you can make more meaningful judgements about their level of imagination. 

When making judgements about children’s ability to engage with their own and others’ work, you should make allowances for hurdles that prevent success in this area. Some pupils are introverts and don’t like speaking out loud. They might prefer writing their thoughts down. Some pupils have poor handwriting, some don’t like writing anything at all and prefer to speak. Some pupils have incredible levels of vocabulary but have very little to actually say and vice-versa. You know your pupils but try to provide a diverse range of ways pupils can engage with their own and others’ art in order to make meaningful judgements about their level of Knowledge and Evaluation attainment. Personally, I never made teacher records of my art conversations, but some schools insist on it and others like to do it for evidence. All the evidence I needed was in my children’s love of art. 

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4. Identify Endpoints

There should be clear endpoints that the children are working towards. If you download my progression guide, you will see that I have provided a set of descriptors that outline end points at significant stages so that staff and visitors can be sure that children are making good progress in the subject. In this way, assessment is much easier to implement and it should be visible for both pupils and staff to ensure everyone knows what achievement looks like. 

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5. Feedback should move the learning forward

Art feedback should never be a judgement passed from teacher to pupil, it should be positive guidance for improvement. Art feedback should promote and improve learning by providing children with an awareness of their personal development over time (the big picture), how they have performed in a particular task and provide them with advice on future direction.

The minute you start putting grades on pupils work and writing extensive comments about what they've done wrong you risk demotivating them. Creativity is already a very anxious process that for most people is riddled with self-doubt. Assessment should not crush creativity but promote it, to inspire people to want to keep making art. It should help pupils understand that we are all trying to improve, that even so-called experts are rarely satisfied. Through good assessment, we learn not to judge ourselves, but to enjoy the process, to relish the journey of creation. 

Create a culture of learning conversations and dialogue in your classroom. Make space and time for thinking and reflection. Teach children how to ask questions of themselves and their work and make sure they understand that in art we don’t grade or judge our performance – we only reflect on it. We don’t use purple pens to deface children’s art, we don’t stamp it with verbal feedback given stamps or stick things on top of it.

 

6. Feedback should motivate - measuring attainment is not the same as measuring progress

When we measure attainment we ask- Have the pupils demonstrated sufficient evidence of meeting the lesson objectives you have delivered? There are always common patterns here and you need to be mindful of some pitfalls. If you always and only ever measure attainment, then the same students will be successful, and the same people will fail. You only end up reinforcing their

pre-held convictions about their ability and this actually demotivates those that don’t think they will ever be as good as the ones at the top. Measuring attainment is less important at primary than it is at secondary education where the drive for good GCSE results is paramount. To be honest, high attainment rarely needs pointing out in art because it is usually very evident. That said, when you ask children to pick out work they think is most interesting, they usually pick out very different choices to each other which breaks down misconceptions about which is ‘best’.

When we measure progress we make it clear to everyone what their basic starting point was. Then use your learning conversations to highlight the progress that has been made from where they began. This is fundamentally different to assessing the quality of outcomes and makes for a very different art room because often, you realise that high ability students aren’t making as much progress as the less able.

This is actually quite normal because it’s harder to make big learning steps when you already possess the skills being taught, but it really helps the less able to feel more confident. By focussing on progress and what has been learned you will develop the

children’s understanding of what they need to do next and how to improve. And this for me is what assessment is all about.

 

7. Assessment should be inclusive

There are two other strands of assessment to mention; students with special education needs & disabilities and those who are very talented at art. These are complex, separate subjects in their own right, but they still need consideration when making assessment

classroom judgements.

Essentially, if a child flies through your lesson easily and still achieves a very high standard of outcome, then your lesson has clearly been too easy for them. The national curriculum advises that you should provide challenges and, if required, extension activities related to the same topic, rather than moving them on to something new. To do this, you need to raise the bar. You might even need extra specialist help and support to develop distinct activities for these pupils, in which case they can’t take part in your whole class dialogue when tackling them. Either way, it’s important to outline to the whole group where this talented attainment lies. If it is well above the expected standard for this age, then it will be counter-productive if everyone else compares their art to it. You can diffuse this somewhat by making this clear to the rest of the group, but it doesn’t always work. In any event, teaching talented students of art requires you to design projects that have more open outcomes rather than teacher-led tasks. To go back to our shading a ball analogy, you’d perhaps encourage them to shade more complex forms, asking them to shade spheres with indentations or raised areas such as the moon.

 

8. Some forms of assessment are more visible than others 

The most important form of assessment you do is the formative dialogue you do in the classroom. Assessment isn’t just a grade on a piece of work, it’s also those stickers you give out, the rewards for the best work, it’s your comments and casual conversations, prizes or certificates in assembly, it’s even your body language. Your children are seeking approval, they are watching everything you do! “I didn’t get a certificate; I didn’t get my work on the wall etc.” 

When walking around a room you can’t praise everyone’s work or you’d sound silly, so tell the group that if you walk past their work and say nothing it means that they are doing well, and you don’t feel they need any help. This way, your silence is a positive action. Use a thumbs-up sign or tell a whole table you are going to check their work, have a look, then say; “Excellent work, well done.” 

When I want to make a comment to a pupil, I take care to use a praise sandwich. I highlight a positive, make a comment for improvement then leave with a positive. ‘This is good Samina, I love how you have used colour here. Just be mindful of those untidy edges here and there or you won’t be able to recognise the shape. But other than that, it’s really great work.’

 

9. Your assessments should be reliable, replicable and accurate

Standardise your assessment and keep it consistent. You can't make meaningful measurements if the nature of them keeps changing. You will not get consistent results if one class have to do their assessment exercise on the last Friday afternoon before Christmas break and the other did it on a relaxed morning in Spring. It won’t have much meaning if you entered some data based on your gut feeling about your class after three glasses of wine and other, comparable data after studying their sketchbooks and folders for an hour. 

Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Important decisions can't be made on one small piece of evidence. Make meaningful judgements based on evidence over time. Also, it's not easy to do but you have to remove bias. You might not get on very well with a particular pupil, they might be loathsome to teach, but this should not affect your assessment of their work. 

 

10. Feedback should be efficient and effective. 

Assessment is the best classroom tool for improvement you have and it should be a positive, informative, class-based experience that gives pupils clear direction for their next steps. If there is any writing to be done, it should be done by the pupil themselves, perhaps in their sketchbooks so you can monitor it later, because all feedback or assessment advice should be followed up on by 

the pupil.

Pupils should be given time to act on the advice given and this follow up work should be checked by the teacher to ensure it is happening correctly. This might be as simple as looking over the shoulder while they are doing the follow-up work and giving them a word of encouragement, it doesn’t have to be additional written assessment.

Take your verbal feedback given stamps and throw them in the bin - or make art from them. If senior leaders want to see evidence of pupils receiving feedback and acting on it, look at the pupils work - all the evidence is there! 

Read the pupils own feedback statements about their performance, which should contain evidence of assessment dialogue being received and acted upon. Then look at the work itself. Can you see anywhere where the pupils have received advice from the teacher then worked on it? 

Make it a target for the pupils to have to show YOU they have done this - not the other way round, where teachers have to evidence 30 examples per class. 

How can they show YOU they have practised shading neatly since you gave them the feedback? How might they show YOU they have researched the artist you asked them to at home? Flip the expectation to provide evidence of progress from you to them - you haven’t got time! Maybe they could have a small A6 writing pad to make their own written & dated feedback comments, so you can monitor them more effectively, or maybe, like me, you could get them to use the back of their sketchbooks.