Individual awareness is the key to success when guiding a pupil through their days at school. We pride ourselves on an informative, frequent and reflective approach to assessment at the Lower School. Understanding how a girl learns and exploring areas in need of enhancement and enrichment, enable a clear pathway to success for every pupil.
Girl's academic progress is assessed on a regular basis and reported to parents at Parents’ Evenings and in written reports in the Autumn Term, Spring Term and end of year summative resume report. Reports detail your daughters progress so far alongside next step targets.
It is important that you have regular contact with your daughter’s form teacher and we, therefore, operate an open-door policy and we encourage parents to arrange a meeting with your daughter’s form teacher at any time if there is a matter you wish to discuss.
At the end of the summer term and at the beginning of the Autumn Term, all parents of girls in Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 are invited to attend an introductory Presentation Evening. We hold two meetings in order that parents have maximum opportunity to attend. At these meetings, the daughter’s class teacher will explain their aims for the year ahead, which teaching methods will be used and how parents can help.
If any girl experiences difficulties in accessing the curriculum at any stage, a discussion will take place between the parents and class teacher so that learning support can be implemented if deemed necessary.
Pupils complete an assessment on entry to the Lower School, after which staff monitor development on a daily basis. National standardised tests are conducted every year, alongside national tests such as InCAS.
Unlike many schools, tests are used in a light way purely to inform a teacher of next steps and targets. Pupils are not taught to the test and priority is placed consistently on offering a rich and varied curriculum with assessment as a performance indicator, running alongside continual teacher assessment and individual awareness for the whole child.
Such is the quality of teaching at the Lower School that all Lower School girls are automatically offered a place in the Senior School for Year 7. Girls’ performance in internal assessments throughout their time at The Lower School, and their performance in the Senior School Entrance Exam in January, are considered carefully as part of the transfer process. Academic Scholarships for the Senior School are available and are often won by Lower School pupils after excellent performances in examinations.
Academic results at the Lower School are impressive, and last year almost 80% of our Year 6 pupils achieved the national 'Exceeding Expectations' level in at least one of their end of year tests.