Between October 2020 and September 2021, we will be piloting a battery of tests to evaluate the language abilities of Year 7 pupils in Bradford schools. This project is carried out in collaboration with Lydia Gunning (PDRA) and Katerina Klepousniotou (Co-I). It is funded by the Centre for Applied Education Research, via the Opportunity Area (Priority 4).
We will assess the core grammar skills, reading comprehension and narrative abilities of Year 7 pupils in Bradford. This will allow us to investigate the impact of deprivation and having English-as-Additional-Language on language outcomes, as a first step towards providing a benchmark to inform schools’ language assessment at the onset of KS3. We will compare different testing modalities (face-to-face online, face-to-face in person, or automatised online) and evaluate the impact of testing modality on pupils’ engagement and performance.