In this tutorial we’re going to cover the two ways of assessing children against the KS1 and KS2 frameworks on Tapestry.

You can add Key Stage assessments to an ordinary observation — handy when the evidence and the judgement belong together — or you can assess a whole group of children in one go from the Formative Assessment screen. We’ll look at each in turn.

You’ll need the relevant Key Stage year-group frameworks switched on before either method is available — our Enabling an assessment framework tutorial covers that.

We’d also recommend setting each child’s Maintained Achievement Point first, so you have a benchmark to assess against — see Setting children’s Key Stage Maintained Achievement Points.

Tapestry provides five tiers per year group by default, and schools can rename or recolour them — the school in our screenshots uses Needs support, Working below, Working at and Working above, so don’t worry if your tier names look different.

Adding a KS assessment to an observation

Start an observation in the usual way: click Observations in the menu on the left, then the Add Observation button.

The Observations page with the Observations menu item on the left and the Add Observation button on the right
Observations in the side menu, then Add Observation.

Give the observation a title, select the child or children it’s about, and add your notes and any photos or videos as you normally would. When you’re ready to record the assessment, click Add Assessments towards the bottom of the form.

A filled-in Add Observation form with a title, a child and notes, and the Add Assessments button below
A filled-in observation — Add Assessments opens the assessments window.

Choosing statements in the picker

The Assessments window lists every framework enabled for your school — there’s a search box at the top of the list if it’s a long one. Choose the year group you’re assessing, for example Key Stage 1 – Year 1.

The Assessments window's Frameworks list with Key Stage 1 - Year 1 among the enabled frameworks
The Frameworks list — each enabled Key Stage year group appears here.

Work through the columns — subject, then area, then aspect — until you reach the statements. Ticking a statement reveals a Tier dropdown just beneath it, which starts on Absent.

A ticked Word Reading statement with the Tier dropdown showing beneath it
Ticking a statement reveals its Tier dropdown.

Open the dropdown and pick the tier the child is working in for that statement — you’ll see your school’s tier names with their colours.

The Tier dropdown open, listing Absent and the school's tiers with their colour swatches
Choosing a tier for the statement.

Assessing several statements at once

To assess more than one statement at the same level, tick each statement you want (or use the Select all box at the top to tick the whole aspect), then open Set selected to… and choose a tier — it’s applied to every ticked statement in one go.

Several ticked statements with the Set selected to dropdown open, applying one tier to all of them
Select all and Set selected to... assess several statements at once.

Finishing the observation

Click Done and you’re back on the observation form, where everything you selected is summarised in the Assessments section with a tier next to each statement.

You can reopen the picker with the pencil icon if anything needs changing. Finish with Save Observation — or Save & Add Another or Save as Draft, whichever suits.

The observation form's Assessments section summarising three Word Reading statements, each with a Working at tier, above the save buttons
The Assessments summary on the form, with the save buttons below.

The tiers offered always come from the school year the observation is dated in — so if you backdate an observation into a previous year, you’ll be offered that year’s tier set.

And that’s how you add assessments to observations! If you would prefer to assess multiple children at the same time, you can use the Formative Assessment screen instead.

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