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Original poster

Year 7 grades

55 replies

SeraOfeliaFalfurrias · 16/06/2017 22:44

Hi all, I'm trying to figure out DD1's report. I don't get the UK education system at the best of times, but DD1 is now in secondary, and of course they're using the new 9-1 GCSE system. I understand that the grade she gets is what they would expect her to achieve if she were to sit the GCSE today. And I get that the target grades are individual for each child, so whether she is above, at or below target applies to her own target, not that of her peers. But what it doesn't tell me is how she is doing relative to the other children in her year. She might be doing as expected for her, but be at the bottom of the year or the top of the year and I'd be none the wiser!

Because the system is new there's not much help on the internet to find out what is a good/average/bad grade in year 7. I suppose I'm only supposed to care if she's achieving her own full potential but stuff that, I want to know if she's keeping up with her peers.

Can anyone shed any light?

OP posts:
wtffgs · 16/06/2017 23:42

DD is the same year group- it is a lot of made up bollocks. At least they have a few years to sort out the shit heap of this year's harder GCSEs Hmm

Huge empathy to any parents or kids who had to endure this year's exams BTWBrew

Original poster
SeraOfeliaFalfurrias · 16/06/2017 23:26

clary - it matters because which parent doesn't want at least a vague idea of where their child fits into the big picture? We are none of us an island.

noblegiraffe - indeed, it is made-up bollocks, just like the SATS the poor things had to sit last year. And because it is bollocks, the only real way I have to see how she is doing is to compare her made-up bollocks score with the made-up bollocks score of the rest of her year.

Allthebestnamesareused - since the report came out yesterday but they're still doing exams (very weird!), I guess it's still based on teacher assessments. Hopefully we'll get a more comprehensive report once the exams marks are out. But in that case, I don't get why they have brought a report out now.

Thanks for the input everyone.

OP posts:
Allthebestnamesareused · 16/06/2017 23:19

Are they grades based on end of year exams or teacher's assessment of her. At Ds school they give you the rxam mark and also the average mark in the school year so you can gauge where they are in their cohort. They have similar (high) results year on year so you can almost work out the level they are working at from gcse percentages

noblegiraffe · 16/06/2017 23:16

There's nothing on the internet because it's all made-up bollocks.

There's no way of saying what GCSE grade she would get if she sat the GCSE today because we don't even have any results for the new GCSEs at all. My Y11s sat the new GCSEs last week and I won't have a clue how they got on till results day in August.

If she's getting good effort/behaviour grades that's probably all you can hope to get from reports at the moment.

clary · 16/06/2017 23:16

She might be doing as expected for her, but be at the bottom of the year or the top of the year and I'd be none the wiser!

But why does this matter to you? She can't do better than her best, so if she is doing that, then great! If she is on the right track for a target of 7 in year 11 (or 5, or 9, or whatever her target is) then that's great :)

If not, then look at why not and try to work on that.

FWIW (I teach MFL so my grades are much lower than, say, Eng and maths) my best students are on target to achieve a low-level 2 this year; my weakest will be below a L1, but still will have achieved something.