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English Moderation 27.11.24

All three schools in the trust and all teachers from EYFS to Year 6 attended an English Writing Moderation session at Nene Valley Primary School on Wednesday 27th November 2024.

Unlike other subjects, there is no test for writing. Although GPS tests grammar, punctuation, and spelling, writing is more subjective. Therefore, in order to ensure a level of consistency in writing across the schools, it is good practice to review writing against a checklist and then make a shared professional judgement.


Teachers in the same year groups had the opportunity to precisely evaluate a single piece of writing based on a similar stimulus. The benefit of this cross-school moderation is that pieces of work can be seen from the same age group but in a variety of schools. Writing was evaluated using a checklist with skills appropriate to the year group. These included criteria like; paragraphs, front adverbials, punctuation, and language choice. It was commented by several year groups, that it would be more effective to use a range of writing that was completed as part of curriculum writing – this will be taken forward for the next moderation in the Spring term.


This cross-school activity will happen again in the Spring and Summer term. Feedback from the heads is that a more general look at outcomes in books rather than a specific general stimulus would be beneficial.


The next moderation will take place at Orton Wistow Primary School in the Spring term and the summer moderation will occur in late May.

By Nick File, Executive Deputy Headteacher