Writing - what assessment at the end of Key Stage 2?

[DizzyMum]

I am trying to work out how Year 6 children are being assessed for writing. My dd in Year 6 has been sitting mock assessments at her primary school last week and tells me she has done a comprehension test and a Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling test. I looked on line at this and it seems to be a set of questions rather than a writing task.

Can someone explain to me what writing assessment is done at the end of Key Stage 2?

Thanks.

They are being assessed by the written work they have produced in class, in all subjects, throughout Y6

Thank you mrz.

My question was what is the formal assessment?

Not all subjects get formally assessed, but the school is still teaching and assessing the kids that stuff, I hope

They have a kind of portfolio approach to literacy assessment whereas in maths and reading and SPAG they do tests to determine levels. In writing they do tests too but for writing the score can be adjusted if there is lots of evidence in the portfolio that the writing test result is unrepresentative of the usual standard.

In Maths and Reading the brightest at some schools actually do 2 tests because you can't get higher than 5a in the 'normal' test so those who may be able to score a level '6' test have to do it for that.

That is the "formal assessment" DizzyMum your child has to demonstrate throughout the year in all subjects that their writing meets the level criteria for it to be awarded. There isn't and end of year "test" if that is what you mean.

Schools can also be externally moderated. This means the LEA come in and check the levels teachers are given children are acurate. Schools should also be internally moderating aswell.

Just to be absolutely clear there is no longer a writing test in KS2.

sorry-- 'giving' and 'accurate'

As you can tell, I am still a 3c!

Thanks for the replies.

I think I understand now. There is no formal test but SATs levels (Level 4c/4b/4a/5c/etc) are given based on written work throughout the year and this can be moderated by the LEA.

At my dd's school she has told me that for a creative writing task one whole lesson will be spent planning and the next lesson will be spent doing the actual writing task. Is this standard practice?

Do the writing assessments feed into the published league tables?

Yes and yes! The work will be part of a unit of work , with the end write planned and then written independently. Other writing, in geog , hist etc can be assessed as well.

The writing level is published - reading and writing are separate

All schools work differently so there isn't a yes or no answer. My school doesn't use the "units" and we wouldn't spend a whole lesson planning a piece of writing but would write for extended lengths.