Brightpath Support Materials
The School Curriculum and Standards Authority has a licence for Brightpath with the intention of providing all K–10 schools in Western Australia with access to the support that Brightpath affords to classroom teachers and administrators in the area of assessment, moderation and making judgments about student achievement.
Brightpath is a proven and robust web-based software solution with a range of assessment and reporting features, which:
- delivers robust tasks that provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate their learning of the curriculum described in the Western Australian Curriculum and Assessment Outline
- assists teachers to identify what learning is required to enable students to progress and demonstrate improvement
- assists teachers to plan for individual student learning needs
- assists teachers to validate their grading decisions
- assists teachers to develop a refined and more detailed understanding of the achievement that a student could demonstrate within any one band of a five-point achievement scale, and to be able to describe that achievement
- assists teachers to compare student achievement within a cohort
- assists teachers to compare student achievement across schools and possibly across the state
- provides the School Curriculum and Standards Authority with a method to demonstrate well-constructed and robust assessment items which can serve as models for teachers to develop their own tasks.
Formative Mathematics Assessments
Brightpath Formative Mathematics Assessments cover all strands of mathematics. Teachers can choose from a wide range of engaging tests which their students complete online.
The assessments have been designed so:
- Teachers can use assessment as the starting point of their teaching
- Students can learn from their errors and mistakes and be given second chances to succeed, and
- Teachers can readily evaluate the success of their teaching.
Formative Writing Assessments
Brightpath Formative Writing Assessments assist teachers with providing engaging writing tasks that reflect good classroom practice. The assessments include comprehensive support for scoring students’ writing so that teachers and school leaders can be confident that their scores are accurate and comparable not only across teachers within the school but also across schools.
The school selects which assessments are to be used during the year.
The Brightpath Package
The cost of access to both the Brightpath Basic and Advanced Packages for schools wishing to participate in the project will be met by the School Curriculum and Standards Authority.
The Basic Package provides valuable information regarding student performance and their position on the scale in relation to calibrated exemplars and descriptors, plus a profile indicating students on the scale in relation to the teaching points. The information assists teachers in making reliable professional judgements and to plan effectively for individual students in their classes.
The Advance Reports provide information for leadership teams about whole school performance and comparable performance against other schools and are now available to all Western Australian schools.
Excellent workshop materials are available to support leadership teams in up-skilling their staff.
Participation in the Brightpath project requires the following commitments:
- inclusion of all teachers and primary school students in the project*
- provision by the school of appropriate support and training for their teachers
- assess all students at least twice during the year
* inclusion of lower secondary classes may be negotiated
School leaders are invited to participate in the project. Please register your interest by contacting maureen.lorimer@scsa.wa.edu.au with the following information:
- Name of school, address and telephone number
- School code
- Name of principal and email address
- Name of Brightpath contact and email address.
If you require additional information please contact Maureen Lorimer.