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F: Practical Assessment of Core skills results

F.1 Assessing and reporting core skills

The core skills of Working With Others, Problem Solving and ICT were assessed in the practical component of the survey. Assessment was in the context of Social Subjects. More information about the assessment process is available in Annex II.6.

It should be noted that due to logistical constraints, these practical assessments involved relatively small numbers of pupils drawn from a limited sub-sample of the survey schools; typically 3-4 pupils were assessed for each different task type in each school by field officers using performance descriptors. Judgements about pupils' abilities are necessarily subjective, and although the field officers were provided with some training to help improve the consistency of their assessments, their judgements were not subject to moderation and it can be expected that there would be differences between field officers.

The practical assessments were not designed to provide robust national estimates of the three skills investigated, because the numbers of pupils and field officers required to achieve this would be prohibitive and beyond the scope of the SSA. However, the results do represent useful, indicative information for teachers and educationalists for contrast and comparison with the evidence they gather through their own work with pupils. The practical assessments also provide exemplification of practical assessment methods as alternatives to traditional pencil and paper tests, and provide professional development opportunities for teachers.

Throughout the following section, findings are presented as sample statistics only; the results are not weighted to provide estimates for the population.

F.2 Working with others

Table F1 presents the assessments made of pupils' skills when working with others.

Table F1
Results of the assessment of the skills of working with others, by stage
(% pupils rated as indicated for various aspects by field officers)

The results show that between 70-90% of the pupils assessed contributed ideas within their groups and around 85-95% showed at least some evidence of listening to the ideas of others and building on them. The proportion of pupils who made little contribution to the discussion or showed no evidence of listening to others was higher at P3 and S2 than P5 and P7.

Pupils were in general well motivated, with more than 90% showing at least some interest in completing the task and between 80-90% contributed to the discussion without dominating it or being disruptive.

F.3 Problem solving

Field officers rated entire pupil groups for various aspects of problem solving as they worked together to solve their given problem. The results are shown in Table F2 below.

Table F2
Results of the assessment of problem solving, by stage
(% groups rated as indicated by field officers)

At least 95% of the groups at each stage showed at least some evidence of completing their task successfully, although fewer of the P3 groups showed strong evidence of successful task completion than the other stages. For the other aspects, the P7 groups were assessed most positively, followed by the P5 groups.

F.4: Using ICT

Pupils were individually assessed for ICT skills and the summary results are shown in Table F3.

Table F3
Level attainment results for ICT skills, by stage

At P3 most pupils were judged by the field officer to be at level A or better in ICT. Over 40% were judged to be beyond level A. At P5 over 80% were judged to be at level B or better and over half were judged to be at C or better. At P7 almost 70% were judged to be at level D or better with around a quarter beyond level D. At S2, 60% were judged to be at E or better and almost one in five were judged to be at level F.

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