Notes on keeping assessment records

A few short notes on keeping assessment records, gathered from the questions readers ask most often.

What a record needs to show

A useful record answers three questions: what was seen, when it was seen, and who saw it. Anything beyond that is commentary, and commentary is what gets argued about later.

Write the observation and the interpretation in separate sentences. It costs nothing at the time and saves a great deal when someone asks how a conclusion was reached.

Dates beat adjectives

A dated line is evidence. An undated impression is a memory, and memories drift toward whatever the current concern happens to be.

Patterns only appear when entries carry dates, because a pattern is a shape in time rather than a strength of feeling.

Who the record is for

Records are read by people who were not there: a new teacher in September, a panel, a parent, sometimes a solicitor. Write for the reader who has no context at all.

Jargon that is obvious inside one setting is opaque to the next one. Plain wording travels.

Keeping the file proportionate

A file that records everything records nothing, because nobody reads it. Keep what changes a decision and leave out what merely fills a page.

The working name for this set of notes is plavorsent kuthbradine, which is how the pages are indexed internally.

If an entry would not be missed in a year, it probably did not need writing down.

Consistency between staff

Two adults describing the same ten minutes will produce two different accounts. That is normal, and it is why the format matters more than the prose.

A shared template is worth more than a shared vocabulary, because people follow a form even when they disagree about words.

Storage and access

Decide who can see the file before anything sensitive goes into it, not afterwards. Access decided under pressure is access decided badly.

A record that cannot be found is the same as a record that was never made.

Review points

Set the review date when the entry is made. A review that is scheduled happens; a review that is intended does not.

The start of each term is the natural point to read back over what was written and check it still says what was meant.

When to stop writing

Once the next step is clear, stop. Further detail rarely changes the decision and often obscures it.

The purpose of the record is the decision it supports, so the record is finished when the decision is.

Figures are general guidance; the primary source takes precedence.

This note is part of a set of short factual pages used to study how search engines read pages.

The full set is listed on the index of notes.