Case Studies and testimonials / The Cedar School

The Cedar School, Pakistan

How we brought CEM to The Cedar School - Yellis

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The Cedar Family

Growing from the Cedar College, the Cedar School is a newly established secondary school in the city of Karachi, Pakistan.

Taking a holistic approach from Grade 6, learning at the Cedar School takes on Cambridge Global Perspectives and leads into interdisciplinary studies.

Rukaiya Salman as Head of School takes us through how CEM assessments have supported their teachers and students.

"Bringing CEM into the Cedar family was a hugely exciting opportunity and a way of improving education outcomes in the school."

"CEM assessments inform teachers where intervention may help improve student outcomes, giving teachers a deeper understanding of the learning environment seen by children and young people.

"CEM assessments measure:

  • Verbal skills
  • Non-verbal skills
  • Mathematic skills

Research has shown that these skills form the foundations of learning."

CEM baseline and diagnostic assessments add huge value to Cambridge International Schools and the quality of its assessment is widely recognised in the UK and globally."

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Carrying out CEM tests

"The baseline assessment runs on a laptop or a computer and is carried out with a teacher with a few students in a quiet room.

"We initially used it in February 2020 with our new admission applicants for the batch 2020-2021.

"We had only conducted a few tests for new admission applicants by the end of February when the panic started to storm up due to the worldwide spread of Covid-19 and schools closed down.

"Cambridge International announced that exams had been cancelled all over the world to protect the safety of students and teachers. An update shared in April 2020 provided guidance for schools awarding grades. We were ecstatic to hear that we were allowed to gather information from baseline tests such as Yellis from CEM.

"Since it was not safe to call students on campus during the pandemic, we shifted the CEM tests online.

"Over a span of two weeks we were able to conduct CEM tests successfully remotely, where the students were invigilated by the members of our administration staff. The CEM reports were shared with grade 10 and 11 teachers and the parent body through an electronic folder."

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How Yellis has helped the Cedar Family

"Yellis has been of great help to our Cedar Team, students, and parents especially, in the time of the pandemic.

"The Individual Pupil Record (IPR), part of the baseline feedback, gives a visual picture of each student’s score in every section of the test.

"The Standardised Scores report shows how each student has scored in comparison to others of the same age who have taken the same assessment."

Yellis grade predictions

"CEM grade predictions show the most likely grades a student will achieve in their IGCSEs. The prediction is based on what the majority of students with similar baseline scores achieved when their final exam was taken.

"The best part is that there is a ‘Teacher Adjustment’ feature available, so CEM predictions can be adjusted to Cedar School’s own requirements.

"Many other options in the Yellis reports, such as Scatter Graphs, can be used to identify areas where groups of students are over or under-achieving relative to subject averages."

Why I believe that CEM is an asset for any Cambridge School

"The single thread running through all the grading decisions at The Cedar School has been CEM assessments.

"It has been a vital tool with so many benefits, from setting standards and raising expectations, to helping us support students and staff, to measuring school performance."

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About the author

Rukaiya Salman is currently the Head of School at The Cedar School.

She graduated from LUMS (Pakistan) in 2006 and became a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) a few years later. Working in the corporate sector for a few years and in the educational field for almost 12 years now, has been an incredible growth experience for her. In 2015, she successfully completed the Post Graduate Certificate of Education International (PGCEi) from University of Nottingham. In 2018 and 2019, she was a Delegate at Cambridge Schools Conference held in Cambridge, UK. Rukaiya has recently met all of the criteria to be accredited as a Cambridge Programme Leader for the Cambridge International Certificate in Educational Leadership.

 

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