Assessment and Learning

At Chertsey High School, assessment and homework are two interconnected parts of the same commitment: to ensure every student consolidates knowledge, closes gaps, and makes continuous progress across all subjects. Neither sits in isolation from classroom teaching. Both are designed to inform what happens next in the student's learning. 

Our Approach to Assessment 

The school's approach, embedded across all year groups and subject areas, is grounded in the principle that assessment should inform teaching, close gaps, and support every student to make progress. 

In every classroom, teachers use formative assessment as an ongoing tool within lessons. Cold calling, exit tickets, visual trackers, and structured questioning give teachers immediate insight into student understanding and allow them to adapt their teaching in response. This is not a supplementary activity; it is the work of teaching itself. 

Subject teachers also provide structured feedback on written work every half term. Students use this feedback to respond and to demonstrate progress, using a consistent system of purple and green pen annotation across the school. The emphasis throughout is on the student acting on feedback, not simply receiving it. 

At the end of each learning cycle, summative assessments are used to check knowledge retention and to inform reporting to families. These assessments are designed to give all students the opportunity to demonstrate what they know, including appropriate challenge at every level. 

Embedding Formative Assessment Programme - SSAT

Chertsey High School is in the second year of the Embedding Formative Assessment programme, delivered in partnership with the Schools, Students and Teachers Network. The programme is grounded in the research of Professor Dylan Wiliam, whose work identifies formative assessment as one of the most significant contributors to student progress. The school is implementing five evidence-based strategies across all subject areas: clarifying learning intentions and success criteria, engineering effective classroom discussions, providing feedback that moves learning forward, activating students as learning resources for each other, and activating students as owners of their own learning. All teaching staff are engaged in the programme, with subject leaders supporting implementation within their teams and sharing practice termly. 

Homework 

Homework at Chertsey High School serves a specific and deliberate purpose: to extend and consolidate the knowledge students have built in lessons. It is not set as a compliance exercise. Each homework task is directly connected to the current sequence of teaching within a subject, giving students the opportunity to rehearse, retrieve, or apply what they have recently learned. 

The school's approach to homework is rooted in retrieval practice. Research consistently shows that recalling information from memory, rather than re-reading or re-copying notes, strengthens long-term retention. Teachers therefore design homework tasks that require students to retrieve knowledge, apply concepts, or practise skills in ways that mirror what they will be asked to do in lessons and assessments. 

How Homework is Set and Structured 

Homework is set through the school's online platform, giving students and families clear sight of what is expected, when it is due, and how it connects to current learning. Tasks are communicated with sufficient lead time so that students can manage their workload across subjects. 

Subject departments set homework with consistent regularity. In Key Stage 3, students receive homework across their subjects on a structured cycle. In Key Stage 4, the volume and frequency of homework increases in line with GCSE and Level 2 course demands, with particular emphasis on extended retrieval practice, examination technique, and coursework progression where applicable. 

Expectations by Key Stage 

In Key Stage 3, the purpose of homework is primarily to build retrieval habits and to give students regular, low-stakes opportunities to recall and apply knowledge from recent lessons. Tasks are focused and time-bounded, typically spanning thirty to forty-five minutes per subject per cycle. The aim is to establish disciplined independent study habits early, which serve students well as expectations increase in Key Stage 4. 

In Key Stage 4, homework takes on greater weight within each student's overall study programme. Students are expected to engage with subject content beyond school hours in a sustained and structured way. This includes completing examination practice questions, reviewing teacher feedback on assessed work, revising topic content ahead of half-termly tests, and where required, progressing coursework or controlled assessment components. The school publishes guidance to help students and families understand the expectations for each subject at Key Stage 4. 

How Homework Links to Classroom Learning 

Every homework task at Chertsey High School is planned as part of the wider sequence of lessons, not as an addition to it. Teachers identify the specific knowledge, or skills students need to consolidate and design the homework task to address that need directly. When students return to the classroom after completing homework, teachers use the outcomes to inform their next lesson, address common misconceptions, and move the group forward with a stronger shared foundation. 

This connection between homework and classroom learning is explicit to students. Teachers explain why each task has been set and how it relates to what has been taught and what will come next. Students who complete homework consistently are therefore better placed to participate actively in subsequent lessons, build on prior knowledge, and access more demanding content as the year progresses. 

Homework and Reporting 

Each formal report includes a score on a four-point scale for every student's approach to homework across all subjects. This score reflects the consistency, quality, and effort a student brings to their independent work outside school. It sits alongside the attitude to learning score in every report, giving families a clear and regular picture of engagement as well as attainment. 

The four-point scale is applied consistently across all year groups and all subjects within Bourne Education Trust. Families who have questions about homework expectations or their child's scores are encouraged to contact the relevant subject teacher or the student's form tutor in the first instance. 

How Progress is Measured 

In Key Stage 3, students are not given subject grades. Progress is tracked against each student's individual starting point, informed by their CAT4 Cognitive Ability Test results and Key Stage 2 SATs scores on entry to the school. Using this prior attainment data, students are assessed as working towards, at, or exceeding the expectations of students with a similar starting point. This approach is applied consistently across Bourne Education Trust and ensures that progress is measured against each student's own trajectory rather than a single fixed standard. All students also receive a score on a four-point scale for both their attitude to learning and their approach to homework in every formal report. 

In Key Stage 4, each formal report includes four pieces of information for every subject: a school target grade derived from Fischer Family Trust data, which represents the grade achieved by students with a similar prior attainment profile who placed in the top 20% nationally; an aspirational target grade representing the top 5% nationally; a teacher predicted grade based on current performance, attitude, and trajectory towards the end of Year 11; and a current grade based on assessments completed since the start of the course. Half-termly topic tests within lessons complement this formal reporting cycle, keeping students and teachers informed about progress against GCSE and Level 2 grade frameworks between reporting points. 

A Structured Approach to Examinations 

The school has designed a deliberate and structured approach to formal examinations across Years 10 and 11, built on the principle that confidence and resilience in examinations develop through repeated, well-supported experience. Towards the end of Year 10, students sit subject examinations covering the content taught to that point. Core subjects sit these in the sports hall, giving students their first experience of working in a formal examination environment. These are not mock examinations; mock examinations replicate complete GCSE papers and are only appropriate once the full course content has been taught. In Year 11, the autumn examination series follows the same structure but extends to all subjects, all of which are sat in the sports hall. In the spring term, students complete a full round of mock examinations across two intensive weeks, sitting complete papers under full GCSE conditions. 

This structured approach reflects feedback from families over recent years. Parents and carers consistently report that knowing their child has experienced formal examination conditions multiple times before the final series reduces anxiety and builds a realistic picture of what students need to do to perform at their best.