This article provides a guide for MAT Assessment Leads on how to roll out assessment frameworks and policies across their trust using MAT MIS. It outlines the necessary permissions, data sharing agreements, and steps to set up assessments, including custom assessments and managing school-specific policies. The article also addresses common FAQs regarding the assessment rollout process.
With our assessment features in MAT MIS, MAT Assessment Leads can standardise the way you manage assessments across your trust. In this article, you’ll find out how to roll out assessment frameworks and policies across your trust, saving lots of set up time.
This allows you to use our central analysis page on the MAT MIS, or to quickly roll out new assessments if your strategies change mid-year - just roll out new assessments, then use our marks migrator.
You can also roll out School Attainment and Progress Target Rules and Target Judgement Rules, School Assessment Measures and Baselines, Grades and Targets from MAT MIS in bulk.
Assessment rollout is not available on our MAT Essentials Tier. 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
Permissions
You'll need the Group: Assessments: Setup permission to be able to roll out assessments across all your schools. If you don't have permission, you'll need to ask an administrator to give you permission following these instructions.
Before setting up assessments across your schools
Check all of your schools have agreed to share data at the DfE Data, MIS Data & Group Actions level - this will allow you to set up assessments. You can see how to set this up here.
If the academic year you're adding the assessment for hasn't been set up yet on the school's site, the assessment won't be added.
Check the year on the school's sites by following these instructions: Adding the next Academic Year to your Arbor site
To enable you to set up assessments for a particular year, you’ll need to define the dates for them. You can see how to do this here: Academic years and terms on the MAT MIS
If you'll be using custom summative assessments (assessments with a custom grade set) rather than our pre-loaded Arbor assessments, you'll need to have set up the assessment on one of your Arbor schools.
Check the Administration > Assessment > Framework > Assessment Catalogue page.
- If you see the assessment you want to roll out here, you won't need to set it up on a school's site first.
- If you don't see the assessment, you'll need to set it up: Setting up a Summative Assessment
To enable you to select any custom summative assessments to roll out across your schools, you'll need to import it to your MAT MIS. See how to export the assessment here.
To import it into your MAT MIS site, go to Administration > Assessment > Framework > Assessment Catalogue. Click Import assessment template.
On the next page, click Browse to select your assessment template, then click Import template. Check the assessment details then select Complete setup.
If you’re planning to roll out assessments for your schools from the MAT MIS, you can change the name of the assessments before pushing them down.
Go to Administration > Assessment > Framework > Assessment Catalogue and click into the assessment to edit it.
Rolling out assessments to your schools
The Administration > Assessment > Framework > Assessment Catalogue page lists all of our pre-loaded Arbor assessments available and any custom assessments you've set up on a school site and imported into your Group site. This is a full list of the assessments you can choose to roll out across any of your schools.
To add assessments to your schools' sites, go to Administration > Assessment > Annual Policy > Manage Assessments. Select the academic year from the drop-down menu and click Add assessment to policy.
On the next page you select which assessment you want to roll out, and to which schools.
- Choose assessment - Select the assessment to roll out (you can only select one).
- Assessment periods - Choose how often the assessment will run, either termly or half-termly.
- Schools - You'll see any schools that already have the assessment set up and you won't be able to add the assessment to these schools again.
- Add to these schools - Select the schools you want to set the assessment up on. You'll only be able to select schools that host the key stage the assessment is for, so you can't add GCSE assessments to a primary school.
Select which student groups will be taking the assessment, then click Next. Top Tip: Narrow down the results in the drop-down menu using the search bar.
Select which courses should be linked to the assessment, then click Send to schools. This will enable the teachers of the course to access the assessment marksheet. Top Tip: Narrow down the results in the drop-down menu using the search bar.
On the final page, you can see the assessments that have been sent and that they are being added to the school's assessment Framework and Policy. Refresh your page and the status should switch to Complete.
The assessment will then be set up on the school's site, and you'll be able to see it in Students > Assessments > Annual Policy > Manage Assessments.
What's next?
School target rules can be used to automatically set targets for groups of students within an assessment so that these don’t have to be set manually. You can roll these out from the MAT MIS following these instructions: Roll out assessment School target rules and judgements for schools from the MAT MIS
School Assessment Measures can be used to create bespoke rules for one or multiple assessments combined within an academic year. From the MAT MIS, you can roll these out following these instructions: Roll out School Assessment Measures for schools from the MAT MIS
To add marks there's no need to log into individual schools, as you can download and import a spreadsheet by following these instructions: Adding assessment marks, baselines and targets from the MAT MIS
FAQ
You can roll out Summative assessments, including Progress 8, custom and Arbor-defined summative assessments.
You are not able to roll out Ad Hoc or Curriculum assessments.
It's common for different student groups to take different assessments, such as for their GCSEs. To minimise room for error in setting the assessment up for the wrong students, you can only set up one assessment at a time.
To be able to use assessments each year, the assessment must be added to schools' Annual Policy. You can do this at your MAT in one of two ways:
- Have all your schools copy assessments over to next year
- Roll out the assessment to your schools through the MAT MIS again - as the assessment already exists in schools' Assessment Framework, rolling out the assessment again will just add it to the year's Annual Policy and doesn't create a brand new assessment
If a school already has the assessment set up on their site you won't be able to add it to their site again, and you can't select them from your list of schools.
If the assessment has been set up incorrectly on the school's site, you'll need to delete it from the school's site by following these instructions.
Returning to your MAT MIS site, you'll then be able to select the school to set up the assessment.
The default grade set is pushed out with the assessment it’s in relation to. You can't push out a grade set on its own, so if you want to change the grade set or add a new one, you would need to do this for the assessment on each school's site.
You won't be able to send a school an updated version of the assessment until it has been deleted from the school's site. Follow the instructions to delete the assessment here.
Returning to your MAT MIS site, you'll then be able to roll out the correct assessment setup.
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