InCAS Info for Parents (Y3/5) - Beacon Hill School

InCASInteractiveComputerisedAssessmentSystem

Ask lots ofquestions athome

Spend timelistening to mychild

Try to learnfrom my child

Learning moreaboutassessment

Not makejudgementswithoutunderstanding thecontext of thework

Focus more onthe ‘process’rather than the‘product’

What assessmentsdo you think wehave on your child?

I value assessment because ...•Understand strengths andweaknesses•Standard of child compared toothers•Valuable measurement tool•Share their achievement•Tool for improvement

Aims:•To learn what the InCASassesses•To learn what the InCAS is•To learn how we use theInCAS data

What does InCAS Assess?•Word Recognition•Word Decoding•Comprehension•Spelling•General Mathematics•Mental Arithmetic•Picture Vocabulary•Non-verbal Ability•Attitudes

InCAS is Computer AdaptiveHow It WorksEasyDifficultAge1 st QuestionX X X XXX X X

Are any of the questions UK specific? E.g. pounds andpence, or general UK knowledge? Our students are morethan 90% of non-European or non-American origin.Although there might be some cultural differences in howpupils respond to a few Maths and Science items, as theseassessments are adaptive, it is not the number of itemsanswered correctly that counts for a pupil's score, but thelevel of difficulty achieved. So a few items in anyone'sassessment which may be outside their experience - on anytopic - will make very little difference to their score. As forthe Reading, we have done some analysis on our InCASvocabulary test for 5-11 year olds, comparing theperformance of children in the UK against that of a group ofpupils in Hong Kong international schools. There were fewbiased words, and of these some were easier for Hong Kongpupils and some were easier for UK pupils, evening out theirscores. We plan to do a similar analysis on assessments forsecondary age pupils.

What exactly is Developed Ability?Developed ability is the ability of children to learn. It issomething that they have developed over their lifetime andthat they will continue to develop. We measure it using acombination of their language acquisition (picture vocabulary)and a non-verbal test.Aren't you using the old IQ ideas?We certainly do not believe that children are born with acertain fixed intelligence that determines the rest of theirlives. We all develop in a world where people and the thingsaround us interact with our changing intellect so that we canreasonably talk about "developed ability" as being somethingwhich indicates the position which a child has reached. Thiscan help teachers to judge the kind of work and progresswhich is appropriate. InCAS assesses this using a culturedominated vocabulary assessment and a culture-freeassessment - POP (Problems of Position).

What informationdoes InCAS givethe teachers?How is the dataused?

What informationwill I receive asa parent?

Benefits•Identify student/class/school strengths andweaknesses•Help identify gifted and talented students•Know students’ strengths and weaknesses so thatwe can identify possible solutions andinterventions•Help identify those students that may needadditional support or more challenging teaching•Set meaningful, achievable targets•Compare students’ performance against similarstudents elsewhere