This article provides a detailed guide on setting up separate assessments for English Literature and Language in secondary education. It outlines the process of creating additional courses, enrolling students, setting up assessments, and managing report cards, ensuring that teachers can track and report grades for each subject independently.
For English literature and language, students may be grouped into the same lessons together but assessed for each subject separately. With our template setup detailed below, we'll show you how to set up two separate assessments - one for Literature and one for Language - without changing your scheduled lessons.
If you'll be using an ad hoc assessment, such as UCAS teacher referral comments, Coursework grades or In-house exam results, you can choose whether to create an ad hoc for Literature and an ad hoc for Language or one for both.
- If you want to track them separately, we recommend that you set up an extra course before you set up your assessments. Our guidance below will cover this scenario.
- If you just want one combined grade, you won't need to complete the instructions in the Setting up your extra course section.
Once you set everything up using the instructions below, teachers will have two marksheets - one for Literature and one for Language. On each marksheet will be any Ad Hoc assessments you've linked - one for Literature accessible from the Literature marksheet, and one for Language accessible from the Language marksheet.
When creating report cards, a separate grade will be shown for each subject, and for each of your Ad Hoc assessments.
Permissions
- School: Academic structure: Administer - Create an extra English Literature course and enrol students
- School: Assessments: Administer - Set up assessments
- School: Report Cards: Administer - Set up and manage report cards
If you don't have a permission, you'll need to ask your admin team to give you permission using these instructions.
Setting up your extra course
Step 1 - Set up the course
Go to School > Programmes > Courses. Here you should see your existing English course.
If you click on the bottom-level course here and you can see all the student enrolled in these lessons.
We're going to recreate this structure for English Literature, which will allow us to record a separate ad hoc assessment mark for language and literature, rather than just one mark for both.
Click +Add on the School > Programmes > Courses page. You can only select one year group per course you create. Leave the Year group field blank to be able to create sub-modules assigned to different year groups. When all the details are correct, click on the green Add Course button.
This creates the course (the top-level component). The next step is to set up class groups. To do this, from the Course Overview, click +Add in the Modules section.
In the slide over add the name of the module and fill in the other details. Select the year group then click the green Add Module button.
You will be taken to the module overview. You will then need to add a sub-module within this module by again clicking +Add in the Modules section.
In the slide over add the name of the module and fill in the other details. Then click the green Add Module button.
You will be taken to the module overview. Return to the School > Programmes > Courses page and you will see this sort of structure.
Click into each level to add additional sub-modules where needed. Your setup will end up looking something like the below screenshot.
Do not schedule any lessons.
Step 2 - Add the students
Next, you'll need to enrol the students into the same classes for English Literature as they are in for your main English class. The easiest way to manage this will depend on whether you use Teaching Groups at your school already to enrol students into classes.
Go to the Table View page from the left-hand menu. Click into one of the bottom-level English Literature courses you've just created, then click the Enrol Students button.
Select the students to add. Top Tip: Type in the year group number to select from only students in that year group.
Don't tick any of the boxes to enrol them in other bottom-level courses, add the dates and enrol the students.
Go to the Teaching Groups > Overview page from the left-hand menu. Select the teaching group with the automatic enrolment into your existing English course.
Click +Add in the Automatic Enrolments into Courses to select your new English Literature course.
You'll need to repeat this for each bottom-level course.
Setting up the assessments
The next step, like with any assessments in Arbor, is to add them to your site.
Adding the assessments to your site
Go to Students > Assessments > Assessment Framework > Assessment Catalogue and click the Create new assessment button. Select to create a new Progress 8 assessment.
Select the English Language assessment. Click the Choose assessment button in the slide over.
Add a shorter name if required, then click Next.
Keep the default grade set selected, then scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Next. Then on the next page click Complete setup.
Select to add the assessment to your annual policy.
Select the students in your language courses to link to, and select the English Language course, then click Add assessment(s).
Select to create a new Progress 8 assessment.
Select the English Literature assessment. Click the Choose assessment button in the slide over.
Add a shorter name if required, then click Next.
Keep the default grade set selected, then scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Next. Then on the next page click Complete setup.
Select to add the assessment to your annual policy.
Select the students in your literature courses to link to, and select the English Literature course, then click Add assessment(s).
Add any Ad Hoc assessments
Because you've set up one course for each assessment, you can create two separate Ad Hoc assessments, one for Literature and one for Language. You can see how to do this here: Setting up Ad Hoc Assessments
When adding the Ad Hoc to your Assessment Framework, choose the marking strategy of One mark per course to collect multiple marks for each student, for each course they are enrolled in (you will be able to select the specific courses later on).
When adding the Ad Hoc assessment to your Annual Policy, choose the assessment details. These settings will impact which students are assessed and when.
- Subjects - If you only want to assess the English courses, select English as the subject. If you want to assess all courses, leave this field blank and the assessment will be linked to all the courses.
- Assessment date and assessment periods - Select the same assessment periods as your English assessments.
Adding baselines and targets
To be able to analyse your overall assessment, you will have needed to input a baseline (to calculate progress) and an Academic Year Teacher Target to get the marksheet to be colour-coded.
To add a baseline and year target for each student, the easiest method is to use our import spreadsheet. You can see how to do this here: Using the import spreadsheet
You can fill in the baseline, year target and final target for each student (what they are expected to get at the end of GCSE). Then follow the instructions in the article above to import the baselines and targets back into Arbor.
Target Judgement rules determine how mark sheets are colour coded, depending on how your students are doing in their assessments relative to their targets.
You can change the default judgement thresholds for your English assessments, so students can be judged as 'on track' even if they're just below what they should be at a certain point in the year. You can see how to do this here: Editing the default Target Judgement Rules or adding more
Marking the assessments
- As a teacher, follow these instructions: Teachers - Getting to the summative assessment marksheet and adding marks
- As an Administrator or SLT, follow these instructions: Admin or SLT - Get to the summative marksheet and add or import assessment marks
Click to add a mark, or tick the boxes next to the students and click the Bulk action button to mark in bulk. You can change the date in the filters at the top of the page to look at and add marks for previous assessment periods if you can't see them or edit them in the marksheet.
You can also import assessment grades using these instructions: Using the import spreadsheet
Use Data Collection Policies to help make sure the English marks are entered on time so you can calculate an overall grade for Report Cards.
You can define the collection deadline, who is responsible for inputting marks and when approvals will take place. Staff will automatically get an alert in the To Do section on their Homepage when it's time to input the marks, or you can send them a reminder.
See how to set up Data Collection Policies here: Manage data drops using Data Collection Policies
Sharing grades with guardians or students
You can share all grades through the Parent Portal, or restrict their view to just a few using Report Cards.
If you use the Parent Portal and Arbor App at your school and have chosen to show progress results, guardians can see student's marks for Double Science.
Guardians can click the View Student Profile button and go to the Progress section of their profile to see all the current and past grades.
If you don't want to make all marks visible, you can choose only to share certain marks on report cards. You can send report cards to parents and students by sending them an email, or by sending it through the Parent Portal or Student Portal.
First, set up your report card. Be sure to add your English assessments from the Attainment tab - just click +Add in the Progress Assessments section. For full details on settiing up a report card use this article: How to set up a Report Card
From the Report Cards tab you can click a student's name to view the different attainment sections of the report card.
You can update the current mark (this also updates the mark in the assessment's main marksheet), and mark the entry as complete.
Once all mark entry is completed, and the marks have been approved it will no longer be editable in the marksheet.
You can then share the reports using these instructions: Send Report Cards to parents or students
For example, on the Parent Portal guardians can click the View Student Profile button, and go to the Report Cards section to download the Report Card.
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