Formative Assessments FAQ

This article covers common questions regarding formative assessments in Arbor. If you cannot find an answer to your query in this article, check the dedicated section of our Help Centre on this topic here.

Please note that Formative Assessment is included in the Perform package. All other Arbor packages won’t have this feature by default. To find out more about your package and upgrading, you can get in contact with our Partnership Team by emailing customersales@arbor-education.com.

Can we change or edit the curriculum assessment or statements once set up?

It is possible to edit the curriculum statements of your curriculum assessment during the year. Please note that this will update the statement in all historic data and marks in marksheets for that assessment.

If you want to mark students against different statements, we recommend setting up a new Arbor-defined or Custom curriculum assessment instead. 

You'll need the Curriculum: Administer permission to follow the below steps and edit curriculum statements. If you don't have the permission, you'll need to ask your admin team to give you permission using these instructions.

1. Go to Students > Assessments > Annual Policy > Manage Assessments and click on the assessment to edit.
2. Scroll down to the Modules and Statements, and click on the Statement you want to amend.
3. In the slide-over, add a Short Statement that will be used as the column heading for your marksheet or you can amend the Statement as you wish.

How do I set Curriculum Expectations?

To set curriculum expectations, follow these steps:

1. Go to Students > Assessments > Annual Policy > School Expectations.
2. On the left-hand menu choose Curriculum Expectations. Here you can see all your curriculum tracking subjects and whether the expectations have been set for each. All of the pre-loaded curriculums are already assigned to subjects. It is only if you create any custom curriculums that you will need to assign it to a subject.
3. Assign curriculums to subjects by clicking +Add. You can set the expectations for curriculum mastery at the end of each term by clicking a curriculum with no expectations set.
4. Click the Change Expectations button to add expectations.
5. Select the year group this curriculum applies to then click Next. 
6. Choose what percentage of the curriculum should be mastered in each term then click Save Changes. 

Arbor will automatically spread out the termly expectations so that by the end of the final term/year a curriculum mastery of 100% will be the expectation.

If this doesn't suit your curriculum, you can edit the expectations within the slide-over. You may choose a goal of 85% curriculum mastery. The system lets you decide what works best for your Annual Policy.

You can now see or edit the curriculum information by clicking the curriculum and then clicking Change Expectations or Change Subject. 

Can we use formative assessments to track the completion of GCSE or BTEC specifications?

You can use Arbor's Curriculum Tracking assessments to track the completion of any curriculum, no matter your school type.

Please note that Formative Assessment is included in our Perform package. All other Arbor packages won’t have this feature by default. Want to upgrade or find out what package you’re on? Just get in contact with our Partnership Team by emailing customersales@arbor-education.com 

We do supply some out-of-the-box Curriculum Tracking assessments for primaries, such as Rising Stars, and some for secondaries, such as DfE NC KS3 Maths.

However, we do not supply out-of-the-box Curriculum Tracking assessments for KS4 GCSE or BTEC assessments. This is because there are a vast number of different curriculums here, which can have their list of statements change.

To set up your own curriculum assessment, follow these instructions: Setting up a Custom Curriculum Tracking Assessment.

How do we assess a child working below their year group's curriculum assessment?

If you have children working below the level of your curriculum assessment, you can add them to the curriculum assessment you'd like to assess them against instead.

To do this, follow these steps:

1. Go to Students > Assessments > Annual Policy > Manage Assessments. Select the curriculum assessment - it may be linked to a summative assessment so you may need to click + to find it. 
2. In the Students section, click +Add
3. In the slide over, select the students to add then click Add students. They will then appear on the assessment marksheet.

Can we delete formative assessment marks?

You may wish to delete a mark once you select a mark on the Curriculum Tracking markbook.

If using a grade set, you can select the Delete current mark option.

When using a percentage grading scale, this option is not there. You can't switch the mark back to blank as deleting the mark will result in an error message.

• If the student hasn't completed the statement, they should be marked as 0%. This is because the information that a student hasn't learned a particular area should feed into their overall curriculum completion, so it's clear they are missing knowledge.
• If you want to delete all marks for an assessment, you can remove the assessment from your Annual Policy following these instructions, and then set it up again.
• If you are sure that the mark needs to be blank, contact the Arbor Support Team referencing code 1042 if supported by Arbor, or your Support Partner if not supported by Arbor.

Can we download curriculum assessment evidence?

It isn't possible to download and print off evidence from a curriculum assessment, such as EYFS, in bulk.

However, you can click on an individual attachment and download it to print.

1. Go to Students > Assessments > Formative Tracking.
2. Select the assessment in the filters.
3. Click on the evidence in the markbook.
4. Click on Evidence in the slide over.
5. Below the Attachments area, you'll see an icon for downloading next to the bin icon.