Understanding Your No More Marking Year Book

The No More Marking Year Book is a celebration of your school's writing achievements over time. It brings together examples of outstanding writing, illustrations of pupil progress, and summary data showing how your school's writing performance compares with national averages. It is available for all subscribers to Assessing Primary Writing.

What is included in the Year Book?

1. Outstanding writing examples

The first section showcases some of the highest-scoring pieces of writing from your school. These include:

• Top Boy KS1
• Top Girl KS1
• Top Boy KS2
• Top Girl KS2

These examples demonstrate the characteristics of writing that performed particularly strongly in Comparative Judgement assessments during the year. Each piece includes the pupil's scaled score and the assessment task in which it was produced.

2. Progress examples

Alongside the top-performing pieces, the Year Book includes examples of pupils who have made substantial progress over time.

These pages show:

• An earlier piece of writing
• A later piece of writing from the same pupil
• The scaled scores achieved on each assessment

These examples can be particularly useful for staff discussions, moderation meetings and parent conversations because they make improvement visible through real pupil work.

3. Summary Chart

The Summary Line Charts show your school's average writing performance for each year group, and compares it with the national average.

This allows you to see whether your pupils are performing above, below or in line with national expectations at each assessment point.

This chart only shows performance for this academic year. If you have taken part in Assessing Primary Writing in previous years, and you want to compare progress of a year group over time - for example, how your current Year 5s did when they were in Year 3 and 4 - you can do so by following the instructions here.

4. Group comparison charts

The Gender / Pupil Premium section breaks results down into key groups:

• Girls
• Boys
• Pupil Premium pupils
• Non-Pupil Premium pupils

These charts help schools identify trends, strengths and potential attainment gaps over time.

5. Attainment levels table

The Levels page shows the percentage of pupils at each attainment level for every assessment window:

• WTS (Working Towards Standard)
• EXS (Expected Standard)
• GDS (Greater Depth Standard)

For each category, the table also includes the national percentage in brackets, allowing you to compare your school's profile with the wider APW cohort.

6. Threshold table

The Level Thresholds page shows the scaled score boundaries used to determine:

• Expected Standard (EXS)
• Greater Depth Standard (GDS)

7. Writing age conversion table

The Writing Age Conversion table provides an approximate conversion between scaled scores and writing age.

This can be useful when:

• Explaining results to parents
• Communicating progress to pupils
• Understanding the practical significance of scaled score improvements

For example, a pupil moving from a scaled score of 500 to 540 has typically made just over two years of writing-age progress.

How should the Year Book be used?

The Year Book is designed to be both celebratory and informative. Schools often use it:

• In end-of-year staff meetings
• As evidence of impact for governors and senior leaders
• During moderation discussions
• To support school improvement planning
• As a record of pupil achievement over time

The examples of pupil work can be particularly valuable because they show what different levels of writing performance look like in practice.

Updated on: 02/06/2026