Lots of schools do practice phonics assessments using past papers, but it often isn’t clear what inferences we can draw from these assessments. We know what the expected standard was for students taking the official tests in June in the year they were first set, but it’s much less obvious what constitutes an equivalent standard if a year 1 student is being given that assessment as a practice check in, say, autumn 2.

If you focus on the official June benchmark (which has been, and seemingly will forever be 32 out of 40), then you’ll likely be highlighting as a concern some students that are in fact likely to meet the expected standard without the need for targeted intervention to get them there. That’s because there’s lots of teaching time left between December and June, and besides, phonics capabilities develop rapidly during Key Stage 1. Moreover, you’re probably not getting the most from the assessment: there’s lots of useful information in your students’ results that can help you plan your teaching around gaps in learning, but that’s hard to do if you’re just keeping tabs on who’s above/below the magic 32 threshold.

That’s why Smartgrade has introduced year 1 & 2 Practice Phonics Screening Checks (PSCs) to our range of Primary Assessments. You can now use Smartgrade to benchmark your school’s phonics performance in relation to a national sample of students, giving you live benchmarks and highlighting areas for intervention. We have three windows available:

• Autumn 2: 2019 Phonics PSC
• Spring 1: 2022 Phonics PSC
• Spring 2: 2023 Phonics PSC

Here’s why we think you’ll want to take part:

1. There’s no additional workload involved in taking part. You can use the Smartgrade markbook to record student answers as you go along, meaning there’s no extra workload involved in gathering data.
2. Everyone can access granular benchmarks via our topic breakdown. Because all questions are tagged with topics such as “nonsense words”, “real words”, “digraph”, “trigraph” and so on, you’ll see a breakdown of performance at student, class, school and even MAT level in each of these areas, helping you to pinpoint weaknesses that require attention. This is particularly useful for class teachers who may not have administered the practice assessments, but want to understand performance on a deeper level than just who’s “on track”.
3. You’ll find out who’s broadly at an “Expected Standard”. Our live standardisation approach means we can look at the performance of our national sample and extrapolate approximately where the expected standard is for that time of year, based on the percentage of students that typically achieve the expected standard in June.
4. You can track progress through the year. Our progress matrix makes it easy to compare results from any two assessments, allowing you to see who’s consistently on track, and who’s fallen behind in one or more practice assessments.
5. Your children will get practice in advance of the real thing. It’s sensible for students to be familiar with the PSC format prior to sitting the assessment in June, so practice phonics run-throughs can assist with that.
6. It’s free to try! We’re offering all schools access to one FREE practice phonics window, with no obligation to continue after. Simply use this form to sign up, and we’ll be in touch to get you set up. Schools already subscribing to our Practice SATs package will get full access to all three windows at no additional cost.