Child Protection Policy

Beaconhouse is committed to providing a safe and secure environment for all its students. To ensure the welfare of all, Beaconhouse believes that every member of the organisation has a role to play, which is encompassed in our Child Protection Policy. Its purpose is to protect both children and staff by clearly defining what action is required in order to keep children safe, and ensuring a consistency of behaviour so that all staff members follow the same process.

Our Child Protection Policy outlines:

• Clearly-defined requirements to keep children safe
• Clear ways of identifying concerns
• Appropriate procedures if a concern should arise
• Guidelines for reporting and recording concerns
• Recruitment guidelines including screening and vetting procedures for all staff and visitors
• Safe working practices and acceptable staff behaviour
• Child protection training for all adults working with children

Child Protection Committees are based at each level of the system, from schools to the School Group to the Regional Office and the Head Office, so that we are able to follow up on any queries or concerns students, teachers and parents may have in regard to child safety in our schools.

Assessment Philosophy

At Beaconhouse Clifton Campus, the key objective of assessment is to provide feedback on the learning process. We believe assessment is a tool to improve teaching and learning.  Our faculty strives to identify student strengths and needs to better understand our learner, monitor and report progress and growth. The following three aspects of assessment are embedded in our school curriculum

Assessing—how we discover what the students know and have learned

Recording—how we choose to collect and analyze data

Reporting—how we choose to communicate information

Purpose of Assessment

The purpose of assessment is to promote student learning, refine teaching and learning processes and share information with all stakeholders.

Assessment encourages students to:

• share learning and understanding with others
• demonstrate a range of conceptual knowledge and skills
• participate in reflection through self and peer-assessment
• express different points of view and interpretations
• analyze own learning and understand what needs to be improved

For these assessments teachers ensure that they:

• gather evidences which help in drawing sound conclusions take in account a variety of learning styles, multiple intelligences and abilities including different cultural context
• collaboratively review and reflect on student performance and progress
• provide evidences that can be effectively reported and understood by the whole school community

The school is under obligation to allow parents to:

• see evidence of student learning and development
• develop an understanding of the student progress
• have opportunities to support and celebrate student learning

Assessing – Types of Assessment

Our approach to assessment emphasizes on assessing the process as well the product of learning.  The following modes of assessments are used in our school to assess student knowledge, skills and conceptual understanding. The data gathered from these assessments enable teachers to plan and refine their teaching accordingly.

Pre-assessment

Pre- assessment prior to beginning a unit of inquiry or a topic in standalone part of the curriculum teaching helps teachers (and students) find out what they already know and can do.

Formative assessment

Formative assessments are the assessments for learning; they provide information that is used in order to plan the next stage in learning. These are directly connected to teaching and learning and provide continuous feedback on the learning process. Ongoing and regular formative assessments, through a variety of methods are used by our teachers to inform themselves and students about how learning is progressing.

Summative Assessment

Summative assessments allow students to exhibit what is learned at the culmination of teaching and learning process. These are taken after the completion of a unit of inquiry and/or a particular concept or skill in any subject.

Summative assessment measures student understanding of the central idea and promote student action.

Assessment of the Essential Elements of the PYP:

The five essential elements of the PYP are assessed through the units of inquiry and are recorded on the planner for each unit.

• Knowledge: assessment of the knowledge learned in each unit is done through the summative assessment. It reflects students’ understanding of the central idea.
• Skills, Concepts and Attitudes: Each unit provides opportunities for different skills, concepts and attitudes. Reflection on growth in these areas is recorded on the planners by the teachers. Self-assessments are done by the students.
• Action: Student self-initiated actions in the result of their learning are recorded as anecdotes by the teacher. Students are also encouraged to reflect on their action either orally or in written form.

Exhibition

In the final year of PYP, students will participate in a culminating project, the PYP exhibition.

Clifton Campus aims to hold its first exhibition post authorization. That year the students in grade 5 will have five units of inquiry and one exhibition. The exhibition unit may take place under any trans-disciplinary theme as agreed upon between the teachers and students. To plan its first exhibition the school will follow the “PYP Exhibition Guidelines” and “Making the PYP Happen” documents.

“the exhibition represents a significant event in the life of a PYP school and student, synthesizing the essential elements of the PYP, and sharing them with the whole school community.  It is an opportunity for the students to exhibit the attributes of the learner profile that have been developing throughout their engagement with the PYP.” (MTPYPH – page 53)

Exhibition is a summative assessment activity that celebrates students graduating from the PYP to the middle years of schooling.

The PYP Exhibition provides opportunities for students to

• engage in an in-depth, collaborative inquiry
• to demonstrate independence and responsibility for their own learning
• to explore multiple perspectives
• to synthesize and apply their learning of previous years, and to reflect on their journey through the PYP
• take action as a result of their learning
• unite the students, teachers, parents and other members of the school community in a collaborative experience that incorporates the essential elements of the PYP

Recording

Assessment Strategies

Teachers at Clifton Campus use a broad range of assessment strategies in order to assess student knowledge, concepts, skills, attitudes and action.
• Observation: Students are observed regularly by teachers, to record the growth and progress of individuals and groups
• Performance Assessment: Students apply what they have learned by completing relevant tasks based on the success criteria shared with them.
• Process-focused Assessment: Teachers observe students with a particular skill in mind, identifying typical as well as non-typical behaviours and learning of processes.
• Open-ended Tasks: Students are asked to complete or communicate an original response incorporating new learning and their creativity; this can be a diagram, drawing, written or verbal response
• Test/Quiz: These assessments provide a snapshot of student’s subject-specific knowledge
• Student reflections: Students are asked to reflect on and evaluate what they have learned at the end of a lesson/unit

Assessment Tools

Teachers collect extensive data through a variety of tools, based on the assessment strategy selected by them:
• Exemplars: samples of students’ work that shows students’ achievement and progress.
• Checklists: lists of information and learning outcomes expected in students’ work or performance. A marking scheme is also used as a checklist.
• Rubrics: an established set of criteria for rating students in all areas. The descriptors tell the assessor what characteristics or signs to look for in students’ work and then how to rate that work on a predetermined scale.
• Anecdotal records: brief, written notes based on observations of students.
• Record sheets: Record sheets / spread sheets are used to keep a record of students’ marks and grades for stand-alone teaching and learning of Mathematics and Languages.

Reporting

The following modes are used for providing feedback of learning to the stakeholders.

Portfolios
• Portfolios are a purposeful collection of a student’s work designed to demonstrate students’ progress, achievement, creativity and reflection.
• Pedagogical leaders and teachers have collaboratively developed portfolio essential agreements, which are followed across school. ( See appendix 1 )

The Written Report
• The report cards are distributed to the parents twice in an academic year. The written report notifies the student’s performance in the transdisciplinary units, subject-specific learning and the PYP essential elements

Parent/Teacher/Student Conferences
Teacher–student: The teacher-student meetings are held regularly within the school time. Whereby, the teacher gives feedback to the student to enable further improvement and development of skills.
Teacher–parent(s): The teacher-parent meetings are held once in a term. These meetings enable the school to inform the parents about their child’s progress and gather background information and cultural context of students’ learning. These meeting helps teachers to address parental concerns and define their role in the learning process.
Three-way Conferences: Three-way conferences involve the student, parents/guardian and teacher. They are held once in each term. Students discuss their learning and understanding with their parents and teacher, who are responsible for supporting the student through this process. The student, parents and the teacher collaborate to establish and identify the student’s strengths and areas for improvement. The teacher is an integral part of the process and takes notes of the discussion.

Evaluation and Review of the Assessment Policy

The policy shall be reviewed annually by teachers and pedagogical leaders and shared with all the stake holders.