Every year schools need to produce a statutory annual report for parents and carers, setting out ‘brief particulars of achievements in all subjects and activities forming part of the school curriculum’. This should include the strengths and developmental needs of each child. In a subject such as history, how do...

The school in which I work serves a community of locals and expats and follows the English National Curriculum. Situated in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, we are one of a growing number of international schools in the area. It is five form entry and only opened in 2009....

The new (2014) Primary History National Curriculum is finally upon us. The first thing you might notice is that the level descriptions have gone. These were first introduced in 1995 and became the mainstay for assessing pupil progression and attainment in Key Stages 1, 2 and 3 across schools in...

The removal of National Curriculum levels has left many schools and teachers scratching their heads and wondering how to proceed. National Curriculum levels have been used and misused in the past to both define progress in the subject and as a basis for assessment. In this pamphlet, Jamie Byrom takes us...

Whilst a number of schools have had well-considered assessment procedures for primary history, these represented a minority.  With the new national curriculum, the old level descriptions have been replaced by a single sentence attainment target which states that "by the end of each key stage, pupils are expected to know,...

In the 2014 national curriculum for primary and secondary history one of the key differences is that, for the first time since 1991, there are no level descriptions against which you can assess pupils' progress.  The new attainment target says simply that: ‘By the end of each key stage, pupils...