level 5 at primary vs. Level 5 at secondary

[Iamnotminterested]

I've read a lot about a level 3 at ks1 not somehow being the same as a level 3 at ks2 so am wondering if this idea also applies to what the title suggests? Would a child assessed at level 5 at the end of year 6 expect to be at the same level now in year 7 or are high schools so rigorous in their initial assessing that often children are assessed lower? Genuinely interested to hear teacher's views on this.

[chloe74]

My experience is that children's grades are inflated at the end of KS2 to make the school look good in league tables. When they are assessed in Year 7 by the secondary school you should get a much more realistic assessment of the child's level.

[Funnylittleturkishdelight]

I've never seen a KS2 level 5 student produce a l5 piece of writing or reading comprehension in the first term of yr7.

6 weeks break, different teacher, new environment...whatever it is, they take a while to get to l5 again.

[Feenie]

KS2 tests are externally marked - so any inflation is due to external influences. It may also be worth checking the mark, since primary schools who drill pupils may have children who scrape levels and are not working securely within them.

There isn't a difference between level 3 and KS1 and KS2 any longer - not since they became predominantly teacher assessment in 2005, and therefore use whole school assessment procedures to make judgements. The issue may still occur in separate infant schools.

I've never seen a KS2 level 5 student produce a l5 piece of writing or reading comprehension in the first term of yr7.

6 weeks break, different teacher, new environment...whatever it is, they take a while to get to l5 again.

The same can be said of any level and any year group! If they were secure at that level in the first place, then it doesn't take long for them to begin producing their best work again.

[Funnylittleturkishdelight]

Not all KS2 tests are externally marked. None of our feeder schools are.

[Iamnotminterested]

Funnylittleturkishdelight - really???

[chloe74]

The same cant be said of secondary school belgianbun. Secondary progress is measured by the improvement between KS2 and KS4. There is no benefit for a school claiming progress to KS3. Bringing us back to the best measurement of a Child's level is in Y7. The only benefit to a secondary school in downgrading a child is for identification to target resources at them to help.

[Feenie]

Only the writing is not externally marked (unless a school is selected for sample marking, as we were last year) and that only happened for the very first time this year. Presumably you are talking historically about 'never having seen etc' - and if you are talking about state schools then that cannot be right.

It was statutory for all writing to be externally marked up until last year. There was a boycott of all KS2 tests by around a third of primary schools in 2010.

[ReallyTired]

Secondary school is a massive challenge in its own right. Its well know that year 7s go backwards academically for various reasons. Children have to cope with the challenge of moving from classroom to classroom, making new friends and the rush of teenage hormones. There is far less spoonfeeding in secondary school than a nice cosy primary school classroom.

[qumquat]

As a secondary English teacher I too have very rarely if ever seen a child who achieved level 5 at KS2 achieve anything approaching that at the start of Yr 7. I think most of the reasons for this have been mentioned upthread. I'd like to reiterate that there is no ebenfit whatever to the secondary teacher 'downgrading' students at the start of Yr 7. We are judged on progress from the end of KS2 levels, whether we think those are an accurate assessment of the students' abilities or not.

[cece]

As a Year 6 teacher our writing assessments were internally marked. We were not able to award a level 5 for writing unless the child could demonstrate an ability to work at that level across a range of genre.

We had to produce 4 or 5 pieces of work that supported a level 5 (or 3 or 4) for the external moderator to agree.

I think this led to the amount of level 5s that we had last year decreasing, as it was not the case that the children could 'scrape' a level 5 in a one off test like in previous years.They had to be a secure level 5 last year to get it.

[Iamnotminterested]

Perhaps here I should add that DD got L5 for all aspects of Literacy at the end of year 6 and also L5 for science; we have just had her first set of current levels and she has been assessed as L5 for both subjects. So I'm feeling rather pleased for her now!

[prettydaisies]

This isn't always the case.
My DD's school did not do the level 6 tests last year. She was given Level 5 for reading and writing (which for writing, I felt was accurate. She may have been a bit better at reading). The assessed pieces of work that DD has done so far in Y7 have been given a level 6. Now, this is probably not going to be the case for every bit of English she writes, but at my daughter's school you can be given 5s and 6s at this stage in Y7.

[choccyp1g]

Prettydaises, almost exactly the same story for my DS. His Y7 english writing work has been assessed at 6b and 6a; in maths he's been getting 98% plus in level 6 tests.
I'm not surprised at the maths, as he found it easy to get 100% on the level 5 tests, but the English was a bit unexpected, as he was 5b at best in Y6.

[MirandaWest]

I wonder how ks2 levels and ks3 levels compare at middle schools ie ones going from year 5 to year 8?

[trinity0097]

I used to work in a middle school, levels in English would struggle to progress, in maths very rapid progress, e.g. An average child would make a year's worth of progress in yr 7. By the end of yr 8 we would expect all but the weakest to make 2-3 whole levels of progress in maths.

[noblegiraffe]

You can easily compare a KS2 level 3-5 SATs maths paper with a KS3 level 3-5 maths SATs paper (back from when they were external exams). They are all on the Internet. They feel quite different and the KS3 one contains more algebra even though technically they're meant to be exactly the same level of assessment.

[trinity0097]

I used to give my Yr 6s a Maths Level 3-5 KS3 set of papers as extra practice for their KS2 SATs, working in a middle school I had easy access to both, the children would easily score at least one sub-level higher on the KS3 tests than they did in KS2 tests (about a week difference in time, so nothing to do with being older/more experience etc).

I put lots of this down to the fact that the KS3 SATs papers are longer (1hr rather than 45min), therefore there are more easy questions to build up the marks on.

[Niceweather]

I am beginning to wonder if these marks can vary enormously depending on the school. I know at DS's school, there are upper limits (eg. Yr 7, 5a drama = highest possible) in some subjects but these do not seem to apply in other schools.

[Madmog]

My daughter got a SATS level 5 in her English, Maths and Science. We were told by her teacher before that she was at levels 5a English, 5b Science and 5c Maths. She has started secondary school now and they have assessed her at level 5.25 in all these subjects, actually same goes for RE and History, so she went in at roughly the same level. So far we've been told she will be working towards a level 7.25 at the end of KS3 and the other levels are due in the next few days.

[noblegiraffe]

trinity I agree it is harder to get a level 6 on a single level paper than a 3 level paper. They did pilot single level papers at KS3 years ago, but I believe scrapped it because students were doing worse on them. I personally think there should be a 4-6 paper at KS2 to open it up to more students but apparently levels are being scrapped so it'll be all change anyway.