ABSTRACT
It is a truism that learning must start from the point at which the pupil is; how could it be otherwise? What is harder to achieve in practice is that teaching begins from where the pupil is or, to put it another way, that teaching matches the pupil’s learning needs. This stance is endorsed in the Code of Practice on the Identification and Assessment of Special Educational Needs (DfE, 1994) which states that ‘At the heart of every school and every class lies a cycle of planning, teaching and assessing’ (2:1). The same point is made very strongly in the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s (SCAA) 1996 document in relation to planning the curriculum for pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD). That document explicitly links short-term planning with ongoing teacher assessment and, in turn, such assessment with record-keeping. A discussion of record-keeping is beyond the scope of this chapter (cf. Byers and Rose, 1996; Lawson, 1992) but effective assessment procedures will need to link with records of children’s learning and experiences.
