Secondary teachers what level would you teach at?

[OneInEight]

If a child has a wide discrepancy between attainment in class work and tests what level do you teach at. In ds2's case the test level was a lot higher (two whole levels) than the apparent class work level.

[noblegiraffe]

Which subject?

If a student in maths scored that highly then they would be put up a set to access teaching at a higher level.

[OneInEight]

Thanks. Subject is science if that makes a difference.

[Fourarmsv2]

Classes will often have students working at a range of levels.

What year?

[OneInEight]

Seriously drip-feeding here. He is in a tiny school in a tiny class (due to AS and mental health problems) so differentiation should be possible am really just asking if teachers think the class work or test is more representative of the level to teach at. My gut feeling is the test and that he performs badly in class because he has covered the material years ago and is bored but I wanted to know if this is a reasonable position or not before arguing with the school. There may be good reasons for teaching at the lower level that I am not aware of. He is going to be starting Year 8 and this is really a last ditch attempt to get him to re-engage with learning before the GCSE courses start.

[noblegiraffe]

If a student demonstrated in a thorough test that we were sure they hadn't cheated on (e.g. SATs papers which are available online) that they were capable of work at a much higher level than they were producing in class, then the assumption would be that the classwork was the result of lack of effort.

Attempts would then be made to get the student to engage with work at a much higher level now that we knew what they were capable of producing.

Was the test given at school or at home?

[OneInEight]

Thanks. Test was performed at school. He is a challenging young man to teach parent so I do have sympathies for his teachers but if we could get him interested in classwork again then I think it would help all round.