Authored by Sandra Price

At ISZN, we’re proud of our students’ exam results and university offers — and we’re often asked what makes a school “good” in the first place. Is it exam results? University placements? These matter, and our students consistently perform well on both counts. But on their own, these outcomes only tell part of the story — because they don’t tell you where a student started. That’s where value added comes in.

Value added is a way of measuring the progress a student makes over time, rather than simply looking at where they end up. It compares a student’s actual achievement against their projected achievement based on a reliable starting point, or baseline. In other words: it’s not just about the grade a child receives, but about how far they’ve travelled to get there. A student who arrives facing real challenges and grows in confidence and ability has enormous value added, even if their final grade looks different to a peer who started from a stronger position. For us, this is a truer, fairer measure of what a school, and a student, actually achieves.

So how does this work in practice at ISZN?

Establishing a Strong Baseline

You can’t measure progress without knowing where a student started, so baseline assessment is central to everything we do, though which assessment we use depends on the student and their stage of learning.

  • CAT4 (Cognitive Ability Testing) is completed by all students from Year 2 upward. This gives us a clear picture of each student’s cognitive strengths and areas for development, allowing us to adapt our teaching to the individual rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
  • Cambridge CEM (Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring) assessments are used in Year 9 to benchmark subject-specific knowledge, giving us a clear measure of foundational understanding in Maths, Science, and English as students move into their upper secondary years.
  • Internal assessments, both formative and summative, run continuously across the school. In Primary, students complete regular reading assessments to track progress closely over time.
  • WIDA assessments are used with students for whom English is an additional language, helping us identify the specific support they need and put the right measures in place from the outset. WIDA provides research-based standards, assessments and professional development to help educators support second language acquisition.

Together, these give us a strong, individualised baseline from which real progress can be measured, not assumed.

Keeping Progress Under Constant Review

Measuring a baseline is only the beginning. Progress needs to be checked, discussed, and acted upon regularly.

Academic progress meetings are held every quarter across the school, with additional meetings scheduled to discuss students who need specific language or academic intervention. Beyond this, our student support team meets fortnightly to discuss strategies, review their effectiveness, and make sure our interventions are current and genuinely adding value.

How Students Are Identified for Extra Support or Stretch

Students are identified for additional support, or for extra stretch and challenge, through a combination of CAT4 data and teacher observation. If a teacher notices a student progressing more slowly than expected, or moving well ahead of their peers, this is flagged through our internal referral process, ensuring nothing is left to chance.

Tracking Progress in Primary

In Primary, progress is tracked through a combination of formative and summative assessment, measured against each child’s initial baseline, with regular data collection throughout the year. CAT4 is completed at the beginning and end of the year to give a clear, comparable measure of growth, while ongoing internal teacher assessment tracks development in between. Families stay closely connected to this picture through two parent-teacher conferences and two written reports each year.

Tracking Progress in Lower and Upper Secondary

As students move into Lower and Upper Secondary, the picture becomes more detailed. Alongside CAT4 testing and ongoing formative and summative assessment, the rigour increases in line with examination expectations. Mock examinations are held at the end of the year for Years 10 and 12, and in January/February for Years 11 and 13, ensuring students are genuinely ready for the real examinations when it matters most.

Throughout the year, students receive four grade updates, which include not just academic attainment but effort in class and readiness for learning,  because progress is about more than test scores. The final report of the year includes detailed homeroom and subject-specific comments, and families meet with teachers at two parent-teacher conferences across the year.

What Does an Intervention Actually Look Like?

When a student is referred, whether by one teacher or several, we take a considered, individual approach. In Primary, this might involve unobtrusive in-class observation to understand how a child is learning day-to-day. In Secondary, it typically starts with detailed feedback from subject teachers.

Where needed, we go further with individual testing to understand any specific barriers to learning. From there, an individualised learning plan is put in place, with regular reassessment to check whether the strategies are actually working, and to adjust them if they’re not.

The Results Speak for Themselves

This approach delivers real, measurable outcomes. Across our Secondary examination years, students achieved, on average, a whole grade level improvement on their predicted CAT4 scores, a clear demonstration of the value being added throughout their time with us.

Joined-Up Thinking: Pastoral and Academic Teams

Academic progress rarely happens in isolation from wellbeing, so our pastoral and academic teams work closely together. They meet weekly and share information through common platforms, with oversight from the leadership team ensuring that everyone is working from the same picture and responding in a coordinated, consistent way.

The Role of Parents

Parents are an integral part of these conversations. Progress is discussed at parent-teacher conferences as a matter of course, and if a challenge is identified parents are brought in promptly to discuss our approach together. From there, we follow up at least each quarter to share updates on progress and any changes to the plan.

The Role of Students

Students, too, are part of this process, in an age-appropriate way. In Upper Secondary, students are always included in progress conversations directly. In Primary and Lower Secondary, students are involved when progress is positive, but if a challenge is identified, these conversations happen with staff and parents first. That said, students are always kept aware of what they’re doing well and what they’re working towards, so they leave every conversation with a clear sense of purpose.

Ultimately, Value Added isn’t a single number or a line on a report, it’s a philosophy that runs through everything we do at ISZN. From the moment a student joins us, we’re building a clear picture of who they are as a learner, checking in regularly, adjusting our approach where needed, and keeping families and students at the heart of the conversation throughout.

Because at the end of the day, the question we’re most interested in isn’t “what grade did this student get?” It’s “how far have they come?”