Newsletter 40: Summative assessment The focus of the last
e-Newsletter was formative assessment—the range of ways
educators collect information about and analyse children's
learning. This e-Newsletter explores how educators analyse that
collection of information to make a summative assessment of each
child's progress. The term summative describes assessment
processes that 'sum up' what a child has learned by reviewing
documentation gathered over time from a range of sources. These
processes bring together information about what the child knows,
understands and can do in relation to the Early Years Learning
Framework (EYLF) Learning Outcomes. Summative assessment differs
from analyses of learning that occur for individual pieces of
documentation such as anecdotal records, photos or learning
stories, as it involves reviewing a range of records in order to
understand and document the 'distance travelled' by a child.