Personalised assessments
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- Part of:
- Support Centre
Suggested audience:
- regional education consortia and local authority staff with responsibility for literacy, numeracy or assessment
- school governors
- other education professionals who are not school staff and therefore do not have access to the Personalised Assessment website
All the information and resources on these pages are included on the assessments website, which school staff can access.
For support on the personalised assessments please contact the Assessment Helpdesk (for schools only) on 029 2026 5099 or help@personalisedassessments.wales.
For support on managing school users’ Hwb accounts please contact hwb@gov.wales or 0300 0252525.
The purpose of personalised assessments is formative: to help learners progress, through understanding what they can do, the things they need to work on, and their next steps.
The assessments are taken online and are adaptive, i.e. the questions are selected based on the learner’s response to the previous question. If a learner answers a question incorrectly, they will get an easier question; if a learner answers a question correctly, they will get a more challenging question. This provides an individual assessment experience and tailors the level of challenge for every learner.
The information from the personalised assessments (including individual learner feedback and progress, and group reports) will add to what teachers know about their learners’ reading and numeracy from their work every day in the classroom and help them to plan their learners’ next steps.
Accessing personalised assessments
Access to the Personalised Assessment website is available to head teachers, teachers and learners (in maintained schools in Wales) via their Hwb logins.
Head teachers decide which of their staff members have access to assessments and reports; the assessment site is not available to individuals who do not appear on a school’s MIS.
Administration Handbook
The Administration Handbook sets out the arrangements for the National Reading and Numeracy Personalised Assessments to be taken by learners in Years 2 to 9 in maintained schools in Wales.
Refer to this guidance for information on:
- timing of personalised assessments
- access to personalised assessments
- user management
- scheduling and taking assessments
- assessment feedback and reports
- modifications and disapplication
Key changes for September 2023
For assessments taken from September 2023, progress and age-standardised scores take account of ‘learning time’. Learning time refers to the point in the school year at which a learner completes an assessment. Read the key changes for September 2023 to find out more.
User guide
The user guide sets out the processes for administering the personalised assessments which are taken by all learners in Years 2 to 9 in maintained schools in Wales.
Refer to this user guide for information on how the personalised assessments work, IT requirements and set up, conditions for administering assessments, personnel administering assessments, accessing and interpreting reports, and accessing modified versions of assessments.
The guide includes an annexe on management of assessments for learners dual-registered in schools and PRUs.
Guidance for practitioners on individual learner feedback and progress reports
This guidance highlights some key points that may be helpful to support learning, teaching and progression planning. It also sets out which reports should be shared with parents/carers, and addresses questions that parents/carers may have.
‘How To’ videos
The following instructional videos give step-by-step guidance to school staff for each stage of scheduling and running the assessments and accessing reports.
Accessing reports and running queries
Learner feedback and progress reports are available the day after the assessment. Group reports are available to request. Individual learner feedback must be released by the teacher before a learner can view it.
Further Information
In addition to the Administration Handbook, User Guide and Guidance for Practitioners linked above, the Welsh Government has produced other documents and videos which are available from our personalised assessments page:
Video clips: views and experiences of learners, teachers and experts
Animations: Introduction to Personalised Assessments and Learner Feedback Explained
Sample familiarisation assessments
Before learners take a personalised assessment, teachers should ensure that they have taken a familiarisation assessment – either individually, as a class or in smaller groups – to see and try out the question types.
The sample familiarisation assessments below are available to give colleagues who do not have a school-based Hwb login (e.g. regional staff with a responsibility for literacy, numeracy or assessment and who have a role in supporting schools) a flavour of the various question types that learners will come across in their live assessment. These are listed below by age group, for Numeracy (Procedural), and Reading in Welsh and English.