Professional Guidance for Assessing WJEC AS Art and Design Qualification

Assessing WJEC AS Art and Design (all titles) Qualification overview

Assessing evidence General assessment advice Ensure that you mark learner responses rather than individual learners. Teachers familiar with the standards of their learners may risk assessing individual learners rather than their work. Positive marking - learners should be credited for what they have produced rather thanpenalised for what they did not.

Assessing evidence General assessment advice - Authentication It is important that any work by learners that is not completed under supervision, such as at home, should be verified as being their own, unaided work. This is of utmost importance in order to protect the integrity of submissions, as well as verify your judgement of standards. It is recommended that use is made of the usual Learner Statement and Authentication Documentation.

Assessing evidence General assessment advice Authentication (contd) Teachers should complete the authentication statement, declaring that all reasonable steps have been taken to validate each submission. All secondary source materials, such as images of artists or photographers' works or quotations, must be clearly acknowledged and any work which is not entirely that of the student should be identified either within the body of the work or in the Authentication Document.

Assessment criteria Understanding the assessment criteria Assessing work for AS Art and Design involves the exercising of professional judgement based on a thorough understanding and application of the four Assessment Objectives. To make accurate assessments, renewed understanding of the assessment criteria is essential. It is recommended that you quickly read through the following documents to remind you of what these are: AO Checklist for Teachers and Learners AS/A Level Teachers Guide pages 8 to 15 Indicative Content for each of the 7 titles GCE revision resources for Art and Design - Knowledge Organisers

Assessment process Applying the assessment criteria Before starting your marking, it is suggested that you view a couple of the Assessment Videos relating to the title/s that you will be assessing. These can be accessed on the Lightbox website. While you are viewing these, take note of the way in which documents, such as AO checklists, Indicative Content and Mark Scheme are used to secure professional judgements. You could use an individual GCE Art and Design Candidate Mark sheet (landscape format) to record the judgements that are made by the assessor, with references to the documents listed in the previous slide. The same approach could be used to record your judgements when assessing work for Summer 2022.

Assessment process Applying the assessment criteria Following your viewing of appropriate Assessment Videos, you are advised to select several marked exemplar from the Lightbox and WJEC Art and Design website and use these to make comparative judgements with work that you are marking for Summer 2022 assessments. It will be helpful if the work of your learners you select to mark initially: a) covers the range of abilities; b) is on, or close to, what you consider to be the different grade boundaries.

Assessment process Applying the assessment criteria - Standardisation The benchmarks, together with online marked exemplars, can be referred to throughout the process of your marking to maintain the reliability of ongoing assessments, as well as for possible standardisation purposes. Teacher assessments will need to conform to arrangements made within centres to ensure standardisation within and between subject areas. It is suggested that other departmental/faculty staff, as well as the learners teacher, might be involved in determining benchmarks, following a similar process to that suggested in the previous slide.

Assessment process Applying the assessment criteria - Standardisation (contd) Those involved in making these assessments should first mark independently and record their judgements. These can then form the basis for discussion and negotiation to arrive at a collectively agreed mark for each benchmark. Ensure that everyone's judgement is valued. At this point, comparisons can be made with benchmarks in other titles, across other subject areas within a faculty and, if required, with other centres.

Assessment process Applying the assessment criteria at present In present circumstances, it will be necessary to relax normal expectations of coursework evidence, particularly regarding breadth of experiences, processes and outcomes. To compensate for this, learners might have engaged in greater depth with one or more of these and this can be duly rewarded through the four assessment objectives. Where outcomes are not strongly evident, more account may be taken of the quality of the creative processes by which these might have been achieved- such as in maths where there is no final answer, but the workings out show understanding of, and engagement, with the problem.

Assessment process Applying the assessment criteria at present It is possible that certain learners might have deviated from the main subject of their enquiry as it progressed, such as by responding to online learning resources or switching to more accessible subject matter in their home or local environment. This evidence could be taken into account, providing it relates to one or more of the Assessment Objectives. All learners should be required to complete the Learner Statement so that, for the purpose of assessment, the creative path with reasons for possible diversions, can be readily followed.

Assessment process Applying the assessment criteria at present Incomplete work may be presented for assessment and some learners may not have brought their Personal Creative Enquiry to a fully resolved conclusion. Within their portfolios, alternative materials, more accessible processes and viable formats should be acceptable, such as through the use of PowerPoint to show possible layouts, different colourways and how proposed large scale work might look in location. If access to specialist equipment or size and cost of a preferred format is a constraint, then this could be drawn, described and/or presented as a scale model constructed from paper or card.

Assessment process Applying the assessment criteria Teachers should, wherever possible, use the band descriptors in the marking scheme provided for the unit as a starting point for assessing learner's work. Assessment Videos that are available on the Lightbox website provide several examples of this procedure. Indicative content for each title in the GCE AS Art and Design Specification can be used as a guide to the types of skills and knowledge expected for meeting the requirements of this unit.

Assessment process Applying the assessment criteria The appropriate band for each assessment objective should be established by determining which performance descriptor best reflects the learner's performance. The appropriate mark should then be established by determining the extent to which the learner has met the criteria within the relevant band. It should be noted that the bands have been designed to assist the marking process by identifying individual levels of achievement and they do not necessarily correlate with grade boundaries.

Assessment process Applying the assessment criteria First - identify the appropriate band a learner s response falls into according to the criteria. Award a band where the learner s response covers the majority of the criteria. Second - award a mark in the centre of the band and then increase or decrease the mark depending on the quality of the response, which may be reflected in the amount of indicative content covered.

Assessment process Applying the assessment criteria If a response falls between two bands, consider whether there are more characteristics of the higher or lower of the two bands and award accordingly. The total marks for all four assessment objectives may reflect performance at different bands across the assessment objectives, for example, a candidate may achieve band 4 for AO1 and band 5 for AO2.

Assessment process Applying the assessment criteria Recognise that teachers experience and existing knowledge of assessment criteria and of standards are not sufficient, in themselves, to secure accuracy. Beware of inflation of marking around perceived grade boundaries and the bunching of marks just above this boundary. The top 10 percent of marks should be reserved for only truly exceptional work. The award of unrealistically high marks can indicate low expectations and a lack of awareness of what exceptionally able candidates are capable of achieving.

Assessment criteria Recording assessment decisions Finally, consider how you might produce a record of each assessment to justify the judgements you have made. It is advisable to produce this as you mark each portfolio. The individualCandidate Marksheet may be used for this purpose but take account of how long this could take and how you might make best use of your time. Consider copy and paste methods, underlining and adding to relevant phrases from mark schemes or other sources, such as Indicative Content, to make efficient use of your time. The recording of assessment decisions will need to conform to arrangements made within Centres to ensure a consistent approach.

Any Questions? If you have any questions, contact our specialist subject officers and administrative support team for your subject with any queries. artanddesign@wjec.co.uk