FIND YOUR IDEAL PUPIL ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK – FROM A CHOICE OF HUNDREDS

Earwig has just unveiled a wonderful new and unique facility for special schools in the UK – the Earwig Framework Finder. Schools can use this to search through more than 250 current curricula and pupil assessment schemes in the Earwig Framework Library to find out what other schools are doing and gain ideas to improve their existing suite of pupil assessment tools and facilities.

Over the last three years Earwig has become the pupil assessment software package of choice for about 200 of the more forward-thinking special schools in the country. Almost all our schools are rated Good or Outstanding and many are teaching schools. With the demise of P Levels, most of these have taken the opportunity to devise new curricula or adapt existing schemes to create a ‘pupil assessment suite’ including just the right combination and layout of teaching objectives for their pupils.

Many of these curricula have an academic bias and include all the usual subjects, both Core and Foundation, but organised and broken down slightly differently, to illustrate progress in smaller steps. Some are subject-specific, others cover the full subject range – and then some.  They can be specific to an age range or key stage, or combined to be ‘all-through’, from early years to GCSE and life skills.

Many more are specific to a particular disability, like autism or physical disabilities and cover disability levels from Mild to PMLD and ability levels from Formal to Pre-formal. Others are editable, so can be configured specifically for each individual pupil, based on the Outcomes required by their EHCP.

For the older age range, there are frameworks into which schools can build their own AQA and ASDAN courses.

Most of these schemes are freely available, but some are commercial and require a licence from the copyright holder.

Up till now, there has been no easy way for the good work in one school to be made available to other schools.  That has changed with the arrival of the Framework Finder.  Use it to filter down quickly to just the schemes that interests you, then open each one to see all the detail you need decide which is for you.  Nowadays we find that most Earwig client special schools run between five and ten different frameworks, so that they can apply the right scheme to each child.

You don’t have to be an Earwig customer to get access to this cornucopia of SEND wisdom and experience and it won’t cost you a bean.  Just log in and browse to your heart’s content.  Select those which are of interest you and email your shortlist to colleagues, who can then dive into the Framework Finder themselves and check out your ideas.  You don’t even need to be in the same bubble!

One of the phrases we hear regularly in schools nowadays is ‘What are other schools doing?’.  The Framework Finder will provide you with a free window into what hundreds of other schools are doing. They are all happy to discuss their work with you and collaborate to try and improve outcomes for SEN children across the country.

TAKE ME TO THE FRAMEWORK FINDER …