Year 7 report

And after a few years at the school you will understand how completely crap targets are, and how little your dc will follow them. Mine have massively over achieved on some and underachieved on others, occasionally they have even met them, they are best ignored.

It is literally just made up. Staff report in numbers but as of the moment have no idea what a 2 or a 4 actually looks like and the exam boards won't say. Schools are expected to produce flight paths for where the students should be spring backwards but this is just a stab in the dark and general guess work unfortunately.

@noblegiraffe Bear in mind that most 9-1 GCSEs have never been sat before this year, so a school getting good results in Y11 will be working with students who never had this reporting system.

True but they used the same system with the old A - U grades. My point was really that I know of 3 different schools with entirely different report systems within 3 miles of each other.

hi, my dd1 goes to a grammar school; she's in year 9 right now, and her targets range from 5-6. basically if your son has a target of a 4 in year 7 he's expected to reach that target by the end of the year. in year 8 his target should be a 5, and so on until year 11, so the levels increase by 1 (unless he exceeds expectations)and by year 11 he should be aiming for/getting 7s and 8s, maybe 9s.

It's all very confusing now. Schools use different methods to set targets and different ways of grading KS3.

I've just finished my PGCE (science) and my last placement school had letters for KS3 and they didn't have targets.

(Oh, and I spent yesterday 'tweaking' Y10 grades for reports because the targets are for end of Y11 and their average is pulled down by the tests they sat in Y9 and the whole thing is now fairly meaningless but looks better for SLT )

My new school I'm not even sure yet, I've been told they mark on where there are for GCSEs now, but also use a bell curve, I'm really not sure how that works?

Anyway OP, if your DC had good SATs a target of 4 won't be for their actual GCSEs, so it's either the end of KS3 target, in which case it's fine, or where they should be now, which makes it very high, that's currently considered a GCSE pass.

Or it could be an arbitrary number unrelated to GCSEs, in which case there might be cause for concern.

Good look getting to the bottom of it.

Chocdrop1

I think the system of every school doing their own thing is massively confusing - when DD started they were still doing the old levels. I found on a website for one of the Bucks grammars where they gave the average level for each subject attained by their Year 7 and 8 students. So I could use that to get a good idea of how DD was doing in each subject - if she was at or higher than the grammar school average then clearly she was doing well in that subject. Now you can't do anything like that.

DD is in Year 9 and at the last PE the teachers told us what sort of grade they thought she was looking at. And I asked in each case "Is that at the top of her range or is there any potential to go higher". So we now have a realistic idea of how she might do working at her current effort level but she also knows what she might achieve if she put in a bit more welly.

How clever is your son? I think the 4s would be considered 'high' levels in Year 7, not low at all? DD is on the second of five sets. She is quite clever but doesn't do any work and seems switched off academic work at the moment. Her end of year target grades range between U2 and U3 I think. I would think the top set would be achieving U3-U4 grades (and some possibly even 5s if they're super smart).

then either the school target system is rubbish, or there is something for you to be concerned about.

Teen you know I would place money on the school target system being rubbish

Agree it’s worth phoning the school, but I would bet a school that has targeted all 4s at the end of Y7 has just looked at GCSE target grades and subtracted 5 or similar, which is obviously nonsense.

Sorry muddled up my grades in the example I gave but hopefully it makes sense!

In one of his friends schools get a 1 - 9 based on what they would get if they sat the GCSE now which seems like a brilliant way to demotivate people tbh but they get good results.

Bear in mind that most 9-1 GCSEs have never been sat before this year, so a school getting good results in Y11 will be working with students who never had this reporting system.

At our school the year 7s have predicted end of year 11 grades on the new 1-9 system, which are based on their Primary SATs and CATS scores.

This information is then used to calculate where your child should be in year 7 in order that they’re showing to be on track for the predicted GCSE results in year 11. Eg (very basic example!) predicted 8 grade in year 11, so tests results in year 10 should show grade 10, test results in year 9 should 7-8 results etc. Teachers will complete assessments throughout the year to see whether students are achieving what they should and this then helps them with report writing, but to be honest at year 7 level of je isn’t achieving certain predictions I really wouldn’t be worried.

That’s at least how it’s done at my school and some others in the area. But remember this is the first year of the new grading system so to be honest all teachers are cautiously doing their best with predictions and it’ll get much easier by the time your son is in year 11.

If it makes you feel better we cap our year 7s at either grade 2 or 3 (on Mat leave now and can’t fully remember!!) so none of ours will have even got a grade 4 prediction - I think if your son is achieving this he is doing very well and you don’t need to worry. Enjoy the summer holidays!

Schools all do it differently

DS (grammar) school set them a Minimum Expected Grade, which is equivalent to what they would achieve at GCSE if they continue to work at this level . So a 1 - 9. If they are 2 or more grades below that they switch into intervention mode. Plus a complex matrix of scores for how well they demonstrate good learning behaviours. (It comes with a 2 page explanation document)

In one of his friends schools get a 1 - 9 based on what they would get if they sat the GCSE now which seems like a brilliant way to demotivate people tbh but they get good results.

Another school gives them all a "flightpath" so its banded into expected grades and they get a report on whether they are exceeding/achieving/falling below.

So yeah, they make it all up - but they usually explain their method.

Sits them - my predictive text hates me

Then it could be a predicted grade for end of key stage 3. In which case he is well on track. Because they are saying if he sat all his GCSE's at the end of year 9 (two years early) he would still pass.
In which case he should be a lot better asy the end of year 11 when he actually suits them.

Sugar some schools give grades that children would achieve if they sat the exam today. Others give the grades that they are on track for. Others use entirely different reporting systems.

So although the grade equivalents come from the DfE, you really have no idea which system the OP's school is using and they need to ask their child's tutor to explain.

I second the suggestion that you have a moan about reports being sent home with no explanation. Ours come with two pages of small print to explain the grading structure (which could arguably be described as overkill!)

sugar the DfE scrapped old national curriculum levels and said it was up to schools to come up with their own methods for assessing and reporting progress at KS3. This has, naturally, been a disaster.

DS3's school and DD's school use completely different numerical systems for reporting progress and they're part of the same trust! Neither of them use the scale that Sugarhunnyicedtea posted.

Sugar I think you must be misled/mistaken.