Scottish National Standardised Assessments: national report for academic year 2017-2018

The report by ACER UK provides a summary of outcomes at a national level on the Scottish National Standardised Assessments.


Appendix 3: Composition of the SNSA assessment instruments

The tables in this appendix provide details of the allocation of items to each organiser within the assessments for the 2017 to 2018 academic year. Additionally, Table 3 shows the number of items presented to each learner, in relation to the total number of items available within the adaptive model for the assessment.

In each assessment, in each year group, all of the available organisers were represented. However, there were different proportions across the year groups. In the school-level reports, teachers received information about the relationship between the learner’s overall result and their result at organiser level. This was provided at the individual learner level for each organiser that was addressed by at least five questions in the learner’s adaptive assessment. Organisers addressed by at least five questions in the year group’s full set have been reported on as a group in this national report. Where there were fewer than five items allocated to an organiser within an assessment, results are not reported, since outcomes are not considered sufficiently reliable to be used in reporting overall national performance on the organiser.

Table 3: SNSA 2017 to 2018 number of items per learner and assessment

Year Group Learning Area Total scored items per learner assessment Total number of scored items in assessment
P1 numeracy 30 60
P1 literacy 30 70
P4 numeracy 30 70
P4 reading 30 70
P4 writing skills 30 70
P7 numeracy 33 76
P7 reading 33 71
P7 writing skills 33 77
S3 numeracy 36 84
S3 reading 34 78
S3 writing skills 36 84

Table 4: SNSA 2017 to 2018 number of numeracy items by organiser

Organiser P1 P4 P7 S3
Number 25 28 30 25
Fractions, decimals and percentages 6 11 12 17
Measurement, time and money 22 20 23 25
Information handling 7 11 11 17
Total 60 70 76 84

Table 5: SNSA 2017 to 2018 number of reading items by organiser (including P1 literacy)

Organiser P1 P4 P7 S3
Tools for reading 40 3 3 1
Finding and using information 2 33 24 21
Understanding, analysing and evaluating 28 34 44 56
Total 70 70 71 78

Table 6: SNSA 2017 to 2018 number of writing items by organiser

Organiser P4 P7 S3
Spelling 29 31 33
Grammar 20 23 25
Punctuation 21 23 26
Total 70 77 84

Contact

Email: National Improvement Framework Unit

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