How to moderate teacher assessments: primary

Learn how to moderate pupils' work, help teachers make accurate and consistent judgements of pupil progress and plan their next steps. Use our templates to help you moderate reading, writing and maths.

Last reviewed on 2 January 2024
School types: AllSchool phases: PrimaryRef: 11999
Contents
  1. Who should be involved, and how 
  2. How often to moderate 
  3. How to make moderation sessions effective 
  4. Download our templates to moderate reading, writing and maths 
  5. Example moderation grids from a school
  6. EYFS: how to moderate the profile internally 

We’d like to thank our associate education experts David New, Carolyn Unsted, Nina Siddall-Ward and Jazz Williams for their help with this article. Find out more about them at the bottom of this page.

Subject or year group leaders  They should: Provide common marking criteria, such as a mark scheme or grade descriptors. These could link to your curriculum intent and pupil target setting  Look at how teachers have used the criteria and raise any concerns with either the relevant teacher or senior leadership team (SLT) Be transparent about these criteria with parents/carers so they understand that the school is fairly assessing and moderating their child's work  Southglade Primary and Nursery School explains on its website that staff have designed their own assessment criteria, including:  The aims of the system  The language the school will use when measuring pupils’ progress against their objectives  Example ‘brick walls’ for each subject and year group to