Year 7 grades

OK OP, it seems to me that you could do with a target grade so you can see whether DD doing "as expected/on target" is going to take her where you think she should be in Year 11.

Tho tbh setting a year 11 target for year 7 seems ludicrous to me. How can we know? especially now.

I still don't really see why you and others need to know where she is in the class/peer group in order to put a rocket under her - if she isn't working as hard as she could be then she needs the rocket, even if she is top of the class, surely? I know what grades DD (yr 11) is hoping to get/should be able to get, based on her ability/attitude/other factors which have affected her; whether James down the road is going to get a 7 in maths or an 8 in English or a C in French seems irrelevant to me (and to her tbh).

But anyway, you could ask the teachers I guess (tho I wouldn't tell you, sorry) or just ask her who's the best at maths (etc) and what grade they got. I bet she'll know - most of my students, on getting a grade, spend the next five minutes asking everyone else what they got

Reading this with interest as DD in year 8.
She has just had end of year exam results back.
She was given a percentage.
They are also graded as red, amber, green or green plus to say if they are on target.
This seems much more sensible.
DD1 has just taken the new exams in English and Maths grade 9-1. I have no idea what she will get but have a feeling the grade boundaries for Maths will be really low.

I take issue with "expected" grades. My dcs are summer born, to catch up with their autumn born peers they need to make more progress than their autumn born peers, but that increased expected level of progress is not built into the system. They are not expected to catch up, they are expected to continue to under perform - the summer born kids are assessed as if they were at the same development as their autumn peers. My ds has consistently over achieved, he started at an extremely low level - he now at Year 9 sits in the top set, the levels and target setting have been so utterly useless for him, when it comes down to a personal level what relevance do they have to any student?

Hi noble. It's not a great table. I realise it's too soon to gauge grade boundaries, but it's as good as I can find on the Web. I use it really to correlate ks3 levels to legacy gcse grades

Except it's not correct. They have missed off G grade GCSE. New grade 1,2 and 3 cover the kids who would have got G,F,E,D. At the top end it's not 7=A, 8=A and 9=A. 7 is a low to middle A, 8 covers high A as well as low A and 9 is high A*. They've fudged it to make it nice and neat.

Also they've got a list on the right side linking topics to GCSE grades. That's not how it's supposed to work any more! Any topic could be asked in a grade 9 way, technically.

If you look at the Suffolk Maths website they show correlations between KS3 levels, to legacy gcse grades, to 9-1 grade levels

www.suffolkmaths.co.uk/pages/SoW/1StudentKS3-4%20Revision.htm

I think the DfE will have to step up at some point and introduce a national system to replace levels. The Tory manifesto said 'more accountability at KS3' but at the moment there can't be any accountability at KS3 because there's nothing to measure anything with.

DD's school have E(expected), A (above) and B (below expected). Which is even more meaningless.

I asked one of the teachers last parents evening about it but she didn't make things clearer. IMO an E could be either "she's great at this subject, and doing really well as Expected" OR 'she's crap at it and doing really badly as Expected '! Totally pointless.

We want to know how well she's doing compared to her peer group so that we can provide extra support if necessary.

SeraOfelia
If your DD has no motivation dont you need to deal with it regardless of how good she is doing relative to other people at school. And cant you just ask the teachers at parents night your questions? A number on a page seems to be pretty irrelevant at this stage. And from what little I know a bright child is supposed to be getting a 7/8 at GCSE a nine is for the super bright.

Minister for education is Justine Greening, it didn't change.

We are not looking forward to Y7 grades of Ds2. Find out from Monday. Eng and Maths are concerning, followed by French and History. We were selective in our revision, and tried to prioritise rather than boil the ocean on revising all subjects.

I do find the term"flight path", quaint and charming. Though, I think our flight path is on a not so high altitude flight path. Fingers-crossed.

Sorry I meant to add why do people need a predicted grade ffor GCSE results in year 7 or 8. The exams are three or four years away at this point and anything could happen.I would imagine most teachers get a feel for thirst scores in year 9 onwards.

Dd is in year 8. We are given her end of term exam scores, and average score of tests which is given a grade equvilant and then an effort score. I pay most attention to the effort score so I kno if dd is working hard. As a pp said the dc can only do their best. If dd is not achieving that then it's my business to ensure she pulls her socks up. Why would you need to know where your dc is in comparison to the rest of the class. Even in streamed subjects you are going to get differing abilities.

OP-
2/3 now is fine because she won't have covered material that is 4-9 in difficulty.

Interesting. I'd prefer it if school was honest and said they had no idea!

These targets represent an estimate of the average progress made by students with the same Key Stage 2 scores in the top 20% of schools."

FFT are working blind this year. Their targets are usually the average GCSE grade that a student with the same KS2 score as your kid achieved when Y11s sat their GCSEs last year (or your school is using the GCSE grade that would put your kid in the top 20%). The problem is that Y7 have got KS2 scores that no one else has ever got before and FFT are using them to generate GCSE targets for GCSEs that no one has sat yet. Their target grades change each year when the results for Y11 come in, so the target grades are going to change quite a lot when they actually have some real data to work with. Schools really shouldn't be giving FFT grades to parents, especially this year as they are junk.

It's all bollocks . God the education system is in free-fall at the moment. Dd is in year 7 too. I am so fed up with her assessments just being graded with 'expected' because she is essentially unable to achieve 'above expected' within the confines of the year 7 syllabus because she's very able. It's so de-motivating. I'd rather she got a 1-9 grade (even though that's spurious too). It's not really school's fault though - they are trying to make the best of there being no sensible system to follow.

glad it's not just me that finds this system confusing.