What is Pearson Abacus?

Abacus is a unique maths toolkit that’s carefully crafted to help you inspire a genuine love of maths and help every child master mathematical concepts. It’s built on research into successful teaching in the UK by a team of expert authors and teaching practitioners to help you ensure mastery of skills for all. To subscribe to Abacus and adopt the programme, please book a demo with Pearson and purchase through your local consultant.


There are assessment statements for Reception to Year 6.  Assessment statements are organised into "strands", by maths topic and term to match Abacus planning e.g. Multiplication and Division (Spr). These progress through the ability levels, so that teachers can focus their markbooks to streamline viewing and recording assessment. Teachers can view and assess objectives for single or multiple year groups at a time.


Teacher assessment

Each pupil has a tile for each markbook statement, where teachers can record their assessment judgements using a traffic light system. 

 

They can record the colour of assessment that best reflects a pupil's attainment of a markbook statement. To assist teachers in making their judgements, examples are given where appropriate. These can be accessed by clicking on the icon on an objective in the markbook.


You can use the markbook to record pupil attainment during the course of the year. This can inform planning and subject development as well as being used as the basis for reporting to parents.


Markbook metrics


Markbook judgements are used in two calculations for each pupil which can be reported on in PROGRESS:

  • Overall Percentage: This looks at assessments made for a pupil in a single ability level of a subject. It calculates each pupil's attainment as a percentage of all of the statements in that ability level.

  • Percentage of assessed: This looks at all assessments made for the pupil in the current academic year across all ability levels in a subject. It gives each pupil's attainment as a percentage of all of the statements that they have had assessment judgements recorded in.

Calculations take into account different weightings for each colour of tile.


Activation


If your school already subscribes to Abacus, please log a support ticket if you would like to request activation of this framework within Classroom Monitor. There is no charge but your school's details will be passed to Pearson.