Sharing criteria in St. Columba's ASG, Inverclyde

Project summary

The composition of the ASG had two strands. The first one was cross-departmental and the second cross-sectoral. 

The main aim was to extend and embed the use of formative assessment in the secondary establishment of St. Columba’s. In recent years the school has worked hard towards a climate of change and where there is an expectation that all pupils can and should achieve.

Case study extract

The funding attached to the project gave us an opportunity during S4 preliminary examinations to allocate time for departments to work together on sharing learning intentions and success criteria. We used some of our funding to ‘buy in’ invigilators to supervise the examinations. The SMT also attended  the development meetings with their link departments to lend support. 

Instructions issued for these meetings were very specific. Departments were asked to produce learning intentions and success criteria for three lessons. A very clear checklist of what makes effective learning intentions and success criteria was devised and issued to all departments. The aim of this was the ‘next step’ – departments would actually carry out the tasks to see for themselves the challenges that arise when devising child-friendly learning intentions and success criteria. 

SMT reported at this stage on the high-quality professional dialogue and sharing of good practice that was taking place, and in their evaluations many departments reported on feeling much more confident about sharing learning intentions and success criteria. 

Although for many departments the sharing of aims had been common practice, these sessions helped to embed the principle of making learning intentions and success criteria ‘child-friendly’. Departments reported that the time was ‘productive’and principal teachers welcomed the opportunity to ‘reaffirm that there was consistency across the department’. One principal teacher reported that ‘the time allowed the department to focus on the rationale for learning intentions’. Another department said that this was ‘a good opportunity to focus ideas and follow up on what had been learned on the in-service day’.

Contact details

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