Lancashire County Council: PIVATS

Updated 4 hours ago by Amanda Richards

Lancashire County Council’s PIVATS (Performance Indicators for Valued Assessment and Targeted Learning) is a diagnostic assessment resource designed to help schools assess, celebrate and track the small steps of progress made by pupils working well below age-related expectations due to special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). By breaking key areas of learning into manageable assessment criteria, PIVATS enables teachers to identify pupils’ strengths and next steps, set challenging but realistic targets, and adapt their planning and provision to meet individual needs. PIVATS supports assessment and target-setting but is not intended to be used as a scheme of work.

Introduction to the Frameworks

Our partnership with Lancashire County Council means that Insight schools who have subscribed to any of the PIVATs frameworks (either as part of the Comprehensive Package or individual frameworks), are able to request access to the relevant PIVATs descriptors and record assessments against them in Insight.

Lancashire County Council currently offers several PIVATS products and supporting services:

• PIVATS 5: The main academic assessment resource for pupils working well below age-related expectations due to SEND. It supports assessment in Reading, Writing, Mathematics, Science, Listening and Understanding, and Talking and Communication. Schools can purchase the complete resource or individual subject areas in electronic PDF or printed format.
• PIVATS PSED: A separate assessment resource for tracking small steps of progress in personal, social and emotional development. It covers Personal Independence and Self-Help, Social Awareness and Relationships, Behaviour for Learning, and Emotional Awareness.
• PIVATS Extension Packs: Practical teaching resources that complement the assessment milestones. Lancashire currently advertises extension packs for Number and Language and Communication, providing suggested strategies and activities to support pupils’ next steps.
• PIVATS PSED Toolkit: A collection of editable support materials for teachers, teaching assistants and SENCOs. It complements the PSED milestones and helps schools plan and resource appropriate learning and interventions for individual pupils.
• Training and consultancy: Lancashire also offers training courses, on-demand webinars and bespoke consultancy to help schools implement PIVATS effectively.

Admin users: setting up the PIVATS Framework(s) in Insight

1. Objectives

Admin users can request to add the PIVATS Assessment Frameworks via the Suppliers page. You will then have access to collections of descriptors within Insight's Objectives area. The available frameworks/collections are as follows:

PIVATS 5

• PIVATS 5 - Reading
• PIVATS 5 - Writing
• PIVATS 5 - Number
• PIVATS 5 - Using and Applying
• PIVATS 5 - Shape, Space and Measure
• PIVATS 5 - Science
• PIVATS 5 - Listening and Understanding
• PIVATS 5 - Talking and Communication

PIVATS PSED

• PIVATS PSED - Behaviour for Learning
• PIVATS PSED - Emotional Awareness
• PIVATS PSED - Personal Independence and Self Help
• PIVATS PSED - Social Awareness and Relationships

2. Subjects

Insight will add the relevant subject (e.g. PIVATS Reading) to your account when the framework is added, if needed. If you use subject groups, you may wish to add a "PIVATS" subject group, or one for PIVATS 5 and another for PIVATS PSED for example, to organise the assessments and save time loading data.

3. Milestone stages

Progress through the PIVATS frameworks is expressed through milestones, stages and steps. As teachers record assessments against the objectives, Insight will automatically calculate the milestone stage a pupil is at. The summary assessments generated are recorded under the assessment name PIVATS Milestone.

For each relevant PIVATS milestone or stage, progress is divided into five steps:

For example, within Milestone One, Stage 1, the possible outcomes are:

ONE-1e

ONE-1d

ONE-1c

ONE-1b

ONE-1a

The same pattern continues through the three stages of each numbered milestone:

Milestone One: ONE-1e to ONE-3a

Milestone Two: TWO-1e to TWO-3a

Milestone Three: THREE-1e to THREE-3a

Milestone Four: FOUR-1e to FOUR-3a

At the earlier levels, outcomes are recorded against the relevant P-level milestone, such as:

P4e, P4d, P4c, P4b, P4a

P5e to P5a

P6e to P6a

P7e to P7a

P8e to P8a

Each letter generally represents another assessment indicator achieved within that stage. Once all the indicators for a stage have been achieved, the pupil reaches “a” and progresses to the next stage or milestone.

4. Assessments

The PIVATS Objectives collections in Insight are broken down into the Milestones. Each Milestone is then split into the relevant columns reflecting the PIVATS grids:

Schools will then assess pupils against each of the statements in each column. An assessment of Not Met, Partially Met or Met will be made:

Under the PIVATS scheme, a pupil must achieve all indicators within a single column to achieve a step. In Insight, the indicators are recorded as individual objectives within a strand, e.g. Column1, Colum2, etc.

If all statements within a strand are assessed as 'Met' this represents one 'Tick' on the paper records. Insight will generate an automatic PIVATS Milestone assessment which is displayed at the top of the Objectives grid:

Reporting

Under the Pupils tab, the PIVATS Milestone assessment can be viewed for a specific pupil within the Assessments Tab:

Progress against the statements over the year can also be viewed under the pupil's Objectives Tab:

The PIVATS Milestone Assessment can also be viewed in the Tables Report. The Assessment name PIVATS Milestone needs to selected along with the relevant PIVATS subject:

Note that there are no expectation thresholds for the PIVATS scheme. Children working on these small steps will make varying amounts of progress and at different rates. This data will therefore not be visible in reports such as the Overview - Attainment, Overview - Progress and Headline reports, which are evaluation-based.

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