A question (or item) level analysis makes use of a pupil's response to individual questions from tests (typically national tests or optional tests). We can look at an individual pupil performance, identifying strengths and weaknesses or at the overall performance of a class, cohort or identified group of pupils. This is a tremendously powerful analysis that can easily have an effect on classroom practice and pupils' learning.
Currently Key Stage 3 English question level data is collected nationally, while the capture of item marks for other subjects and other years can be managed by schools or local authorities. Remember, for us to take advantage of the wealth of information provided by a question level analysis we must collect the data initially.
The examples below show how question level data can be analysed by:
Topic
Attainment target
Assessment focus and strand
Mark point
Response type
Skill area
In each example we have started to identify the key points from the data. You might like to consider why this may be evident and importantly what the implication is for a) the teacher, b) the subject leader/coordinator.
In this example we can identify that pupils at Aldwych Primary were strong on answering questions relating to the understanding of properties of position and movement in their Key Stage 1 tests, while weaker in other areas such as when using and applying numbers and understanding measures.
In this example we can identify that on average pupils at Aldwych Primary are not answering questions in each of the science attainment targets as well as pupils would on average nationally. However we can also tell that within the school there is very little variation between the attainment targets.
Here we see that Year 4 pupils at Aldwych Primary are on average scoring higher for handwriting but lower for spelling.
The graph shows the responses of pupils who sat a Key Stage 3 mathematics paper broken down by each individual mark point.
In this example we can identify that pupils faired less well in this school (compared to the national average and to other types of responses) when answering questions that required diagrams to be completed in their Key Stage 3 science tests.
In this example we can identify that questions testing the ability of pupils to recall information in their science test were completed very well.