i-nfer plan supports teacher assessment and the delivery of Assessing Pupil Progress. Providing a rigorous formative and summative periodic e-assessment tool, it completes the Assessment for Learning cycle by proving a snapshot of children’s understanding and detailed assessment reports with next steps.  i-nfer plan is designed to be integrated in to the APP approach, by providing consistent and objective evidence validated by the NFER for teacher planning and moderation.

i-nfer plan is designed around the core subjects taught in primary schools. Since assessment data should be used to support learning within a class, i-nfer plan is designed to produce rich information presented in a way to support classroom teaching and to provide summative information required by school stakeholders.

i-nfer plan Profiles and APP

The i-nfer plan profiles have descriptive information that maps on to APP criteria. Each profile gives the strengths and weaknesses of a group of children

• Each profile has an APP indication, this relates the strengths identified in the profile to the assessment focuses and levels of APP. A profile in i-nfer plan gives evidence towards the criteria identified.
• How strong the evidence is can be judged using criteria supplied.

NEW! APP report

i-nfer plan summarises the APP evidence from the profiles in a specific APP report.  This structures the evidence by Assessment Focus to enable easy comparison with APP grids.  It als provides the calculated level for each pupil.  This is based on all the data received from your children's assessments, and should be used for moderation purposes - remember, it is not the right answer, but is external, consistent and objective!

For more information on this report, click here.

Assessment focuses in i-nfer plan

Each question in i-nfer plan is mapped to an assessment focus, so it is possible to see the scores subdivided by assessment focus, and monitor progress within them.

• The reporting offers both a brief and long description of the AF. The reading assessment focuses in i-nfer plan are exactly the same as in APP. There is a higher weighting towards AF2 and AF3 as these challenges are for primary pupils. The i-nfer plan reports give a score breakdown by assessment focus in three categories: AF2 (retrieval), AF3 (inference), AF4-7 (authorial techniques).  Similary in maths, the Assessment Focuses map directly to the APP Assessment Focuses.
• In science, the tests have been linked to Key Stage 3 APP Assessment Focuses as the Key Stage 2 APP criteria have yet to be published.  As Key Stage 3 covers levels 3-5, the level descriptors in each assessment focus are likely to be similar at Key Stage 2.

Key Stage 1 APP has yet to be launched.  In most cases we take the Key Stage 2 Assessment focuses.  However in Science the questions in each unit are grouped into question categories.  These categories group together questions assessing similar skills or areas of understanding which help to define the pupil profiles. 

Further Reading

We have published an overview of the primary aged assessment landscape in June 2009.  This includes the Expert Group Report on Assessment, a refresher overview of Assessment for Learning and aims to demonstrate to you how i-nfer plan developed by the NFER is supporting primary schools and teachers in the delivery of Assessing Pupil Progress. Follow the links to download your copy. New Strategies to support Assessment for Learning

Next to:- 'in practice - supporting AfL' >>