Education in Wales is changing with an exciting new curriculum being introduced that will
benefit learners across the country.
Teachers will be given more freedom to teach in a way that best meets the needs of each
of their learners
as they are all different and often progress in different ways and at a different pace.
Developing strong reading and numeracy skills is a key element across the curriculum and
supports further learner development.
That is why we are introducing new online personalised assessments for all learners
from year 2 through to year 9 and, over time, these will replace the current paper-based
national tests for reading and numeracy.
The purpose is to help all learners make progress through understanding what they can do, the
things they need to work on, and their next steps.
The new assessments will be done online which allows for greater flexibility to create a
personalised experience for each individual learner.
Also, and this is the clever bit, in order to provide information on what each learner
can and cannot do, each question a learner gets will depend on how they answered the
previous question.
If a question is answered correctly, the assessment challenges the learner to go further. If they
cant answer a question or get it wrong, they get a slightly easier one, and then,
if they answer that correctly, they get a slightly harder one.
This process gathers information about a learners skills. Feedback will show learners the most
difficult things that theyve got right, and areas to work on.
This will help teachers better understand learners skills and needs, in order to
support them to make progress. Feedback will also be shared with parents and carers.
Introduction of the personalised assessments starts during this school year.
Schools will decide when is best to schedule them for their learners in order to gain the
most benefits for teaching and learning. As they are online and personalised there is
not a specific time of year when they need to be taken.
Personalised assessments will be phased in over three years, starting this school year
with procedural numeracy (which assesses skills in things like number, measuring and data),
then reading in 2019/20 and finally numerical reasoning (which means using skills to solve
problems) in 2020/21.
More information on the personalised assessments can be found at
