Assessment and Reporting

Curriculum and Assessment

Buckley Park College curriculum is centred around a Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum. A Guaranteed and Viable curriculum (GVC) ensures that all students have a equal opportunity to learn. Each student will have access to a highly effective teacher, and access the same content, knowledge and skills in each unit. For further information refer to the Curriculum policy. The GVC will include:

• Yearly unit outline per subject

Each unit will have:

• Proficiency Scale (What do we want ALL students to learn during this unit)
• Pacing Guide (Unit Outline) (When do we expect students will have learnt it)
• Common Formative Assessment (How are students progressing-what evidence do we have of this progress-data that would be brought into PLC for discussion)
• Common Learning Task (How well did the student perform on selected set of skills/knowledge-Summative) and associated Rubric.

Timely Reporting of Learning Tasks

Feedback to students at Buckley Park College will be timely, given early in a unit, or promptly after assessment tasks, so that students have sufficient opportunity to use the feedback for improving subsequent performance. The style of feedback links to the style of assessment. At Buckley Park College, we use ‘Timely Reporting’.

Timely reporting at Buckley Park College aims to provide grades and feedback to students and parents in a Timely and on-going manner. Assessment Schedules for the undertaking of common learning tasks and availability of results are determined by Domains and revisited as a team to ensure that all teachers are accountable to themselves and each other. Feedback aims to be concise and provides a comment on the work completed (where the students are currently) and an area of improvement (where they need to get to). Teachers work from the Buckley Park College ‘Timely Reporting Guidelines’ which outlines the approach to Common Learning Tasks.

Letter grades are given for the quality of work on a range of assessment tasks, assessed against specific criteria.

Student Reports

Student reports reflect achievement at a point in time for each student’s learning. Teachers make informed, on-balance and defensible judgements, based on evidence gained from the range of formal and informal assessment tasks and learning experiences. Reports show the progress individual students have made since the previous report period, with areas of strengths and areas for improvement for each individual student clearly identified by the report. All Victorian government schools are required to report on student achievement against the Victorian Curriculum F-10 achievement standards for every student twice a year. Student reports will be issued to parents/carers using a five point scale or equivalent to show student progress and achievement at the time of reporting.

Student reports for parents/carers are confidential documents that schools are required to produce at least twice a year using a five-point rating scale. The purpose of student reports is to:

• report student progress and achievement in Years 7-12 
• provide parents/carers with clear, individualised information about progress against the achievement standards
• identify the student’s areas of strength and areas for improvement.

Note that there may be specific instances where a school decides in partnership with an individual student’s parents/carers that it is unnecessary to provide a report for that student.