Using Essential Assessment for home learning

The challenge

Essential Assessment is primarily designed for in-class assessments, enabling teachers and students to track learning progress effectively. However, the reality is that students are rarely at the same point in their learning journey. Educators, who are often time-poor and working through a packed curriculum, face the challenge of ensuring every student reaches the expected year-level entitlement (e.g., Year 4 students working at a Year 4 level).

Even with differentiation strategies in place, classrooms often have learning variability spanning up to eight years (particularly in Years 3-10). Despite their best efforts, teachers frequently feel as though they are "falling short" in addressing all learning gaps.

A potential solution

Essential Assessment offers high-quality tasks that can be used in-class at grade level for formative assessment, supporting high-impact teaching strategies. This allows teachers to assess whether students have grasped the content being taught.

To further support learning, prerequisite skills—those below the entitlement level—could be structured as home learning tasks. This approach would provide students with targeted reinforcement without compromising the integrity of in-class assessments.

Considerations for implementation

For home learning to be effective and secure, adjustments are needed to ensure assessments are not accessible outside the classroom. We'd recommend turning off the Assessment toggle in Assessment Options to ensure students cannot access them.

Additionally, educators should be:

• Adding and removing tasks to prevent students from accessing classwork at home
• Enabling the continuum order to ensure tasks flow logically
• Aligning matched learning videos to the assigned content

More broadly, streamlining these processes will allow teachers to provide structured home learning opportunities while maintaining the integrity of in-class assessments.