This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to copy assessments to past or future academic years within the assessment framework. It covers the necessary permissions, reviewing the assessment framework, adding assessments to annual policies, and setting up targets and data collections. It also addresses common FAQs regarding assessment periods and class selections.
To enable you or teachers to enter assessment marks and perform analysis for past or future years, you need to set up the assessment in that year. You can see how to do this below.
For more information on what columns, targets and predicted marks mean in marksheets, see this article.
Permissions
You’ll need the Assessments: Administer permission to set up assessments. If you don't have the permission, you'll need to ask your admin team to give you permission using these instructions.
Copying Assessments to a past year
If you need to add any assessments, click here to see how to add a summative assessment, for example. Follow the instructions in Step 1 only, then return to this article.
Once you have checked if your Assessment exists in your Assessment Framework, you can copy it to a past year's policy. Go to Students > Assessments > Assessment Framework > Assessment Catalogue and select the past academic year from the drop-down menu.
Click the green Add assessment to policy button, select the assessments, then follow the setup in the same way as you would add a Summative, Progress 8, Formative or Ad Hoc assessments to your Annual Policy.
Copying Assessments to the coming year
Watch our Rolling over assessments webinar in the Arbor HQ Community Resources Library for a video demo of how to complete the process below.
To access the Resources Library, join the Arbor HQ community, then click on Resources Library in the left-hand menu or click this link.
Top Tip: So you can link the right student groups, you'll need to have completed Step 6: Registers of the New School Year Setup process before you copy over your assessments.
Preparing to copy over your assessments
Go to Students > Assessments > Assessment Framework > Assessment Catalogue. Check you will be using the same assessments next year.
If you need to add any assessments, click here to see how to add a summative assessment, for example.
Go to Students > Assessments > Annual Policy > Assessable Courses. Click the green button to select your courses.
On the next page, use the drop-down menu to select the next academic year.
Tick all the courses that will be assessed next academic year, then click Save Changes.
If you'll be using custom assessment periods for your assessments you'll need to set them up. Just go to Students > Assessments > Annual Policy > Assessment Periods.
Change the year menu to next year, and click +Add to add any new periods. In the slide over, add your custom periods then click Create Periods.
Adding your assessments to next year’s Annual Policy
Go to Students > Assessments > Annual Policy > Manage Assessments to add your assessments to next year’s policy. Use the drop-down menu to select the next academic year.
Click the grey Copy previous year's policy button to add an assessment to your Annual Policy.
In the slide over, select which assessment type you'd like to copy over.
Please note: If you have summative assessments linked to formative assessments, you will need to copy the summative assessment first and then copy the formative assessment.
In the next slide over, select:
- Assessments - Select the assessment or assessments you’d like to copy from your previous academic year. Any assessments that have been copied over already won’t be listed here.
- Assessment periods - Select how many assessment periods you’d like to create for the selected assessments. This is based on the terms you've set up in your Academic Calendar.
You can also select how you want to fill in baselines and targets. You can always change these later using the Baseline and Targets page.
- Baseline - Choose whether to copy the same baselines from the previous year (recommended for flat grade scales) or roll over the last assessment period mark as the new baseline (recommended for rising/progress grade scales)
- Teacher target - Choose to leave this blank or copy the Year Teacher Target from the previous academic year
- Aspirational target - Choose to leave this blank or copy the Aspirational Target from the previous academic year
You'll see all the assessments you selected in the previous step. It is essential that you link the courses you want assessments attached to.
You will see the student groups that were added to the assessment last year, and you need to select the student groups for next year. If you've copied your classes over from last year using the New School Year Setup, we will have pre-filled these. You can also:
- change the groups if needed
- delete the student group using the bin icon
- add more student groups by clicking +Add and selecting the student group
Once you’ve reviewed the assessments, please click the Copy assessments button at the bottom of the page.
In the next slide over, select the assessment or assessments you’d like to copy from your previous academic year. Any assessments that have been copied over already won’t be listed here.
You'll see all the assessments you selected in the previous step. Add in the courses you want to link if required.
You will see the student groups that were added to the assessment last year, and you need to select the student groups for next year. If you've copied your classes over from last year using the New School Year Setup, we will have pre-filled these. You can also:
- change the groups if needed
- delete the student group using the bin icon
- add more student groups by clicking +Add and selecting the student group
Once you’ve reviewed the assessments, please click the Copy assessments button at the bottom of the page.
In the next slide over, select the assessment or assessments you’d like to copy from your previous academic year. Any assessments that have been copied over already won’t be listed here.
Choose the students and the assessment data. These settings will impact which students are assessed and when.
- Subjects - If you selected the Marking strategy of One Mark per Course and only want to assess the courses of a specific subject, you can specify which courses to link this ad hoc to. If you want to assess all courses, leave this field blank and the assessment it will be linked to all the courses.
- Students - If you selected a specific key stage when setting up the assessment, you can choose a specific year group from here. You can also select more than one year group if you selected Mixed key stages.
- Assessment date and assessment periods - Select a date to assess, or if you'll be linking this ad hoc assessment to a summative assessment, choose the assessment periods of the summative assessment.
Once assessments have been added to your policy, you can click an assessment on the Annual Policy > Manage Assessments page to see and edit the information about an Assessment, or to complete any further setup.
Setting targets
If you've chosen not to copy over your targets, you'll need to set them.
- You can set the year’s targets manually or using automatic Attainment or Progress Target Rules.
- Check your Target Judgement Rules to automatically colour-code the mark sheet based on where students are working against their targets. You can also change the Target Names from the Target Settings page.
Data Collections and Assessment Measures
You can view combined analysis for multiple assessments with School Assessment Measures. These also need to be copied over. You can see how to do this here for Primaries and here for Secondaries.
Data Collection Policies are linked to the Assessment policy. Because you need to select the assessments to create or copy over each year, you also need to define your Data Collection Policies each year if you use them at your school. You can see how to add Data Collections here: Manage data drops using Data Collection Policies
FAQ
The number of assessment periods created depends on the terms you've set up in your academic calendar for next year.
This is why you should wait until you've completed the New School Year Setup before copying over your assessments. Follow Step 1 in your New School Year Setup guide.
The student groups you can select depends on what you've created for the next academic year.
This is why you should wait until you've completed the New School Year Setup before copying over your assessments. Follow your New School Year Setup guide for how to do this.
The assessment types you can copy over to next year depend on the assessment types you have set up this year. For example below, I can't copy over ad hoc assessments because I didn't use these this year. You can either:
- add them to this years Annual Policy using the green button
- (if you have used them in previous years) find the academic year where it was used and copy to each subsequent year
For Summative and Progress 8 assessments, Arbor can automatically set baselines for the next academic year based on the final mark input in the same assessment in the current year.
To ensure this happens, make sure:
- All the students you want a baseline for this year were enrolled in the assessment last year
- The students have a final mark added to last year’s assessment
- The same grade set is used in both instances (this means you cannot use this feature across different Key Stages)
On the Baselines & Targets page, the summer term marks are now acting as a baseline for the assessment for this academic year. To see more information about where the baseline has been calculated from, you can hover over the baseline and click 'More information'.
You may have forgotten to choose to copy over your targets from the previous year. In this case, there are two options:
- If you have not added any marks yet, you can remove the assessment from next year's Annual Policy by following Step 1 only here. You can then follow the instructions above to add the assessment again with the right settings.
- If you have started marking the assessment, removing it would also delete the marks. So you may wish to add the targets manually using the Baselines and Targets page by clicking into each student's year target, adding teacher targets in bulk using the Bulk actions button or using our Bulk Import Spreadsheet.
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