What is being assessed?

Assessment is a way of supporting learning. It helps teachers, learners, parents and others to understand the depth and breadth of learning undertaken so that progress and next steps can be discussed and planned.

There are eight curriculum areas (containing a range of subjects):

• Expressive arts
• Health and wellbeing
• Languages (including English, Gaelic, classical languages and modern languages)
• Mathematics
• Religious and moral education
• Sciences
• Social studies
• Technologies

Each curriculum area is broken down into a set of experiences and outcomes (often referred to as Es and Os):

• The Experience describes the learning.
• The Outcome represents what the learning will achieve. This is often explained, from the pupil’s perspective as an ‘I can….’, ‘I am able to….’

Teachers will assess what children know, understand and are able to do within the experiences and outcomes. Teachers will assess each learner’s progress and achievements in:

• Knowledge and understanding
• Skills
• Attributes and capabilities

There are also three key areas which are covered by all teachers/practitioners:

• Literacy across learning
• Numeracy across learning
• Health and wellbeing across learning