Flight paths in secondary are nonsense and demotivating for pupils SAY OFSTED

And yet... they claim the whole thing was devised as a means to motivate students and encourage ambition... as christina says, what a crock of shite !

A bit late for mine.
Her school used to send every subject path they weren't on target for according to their flight path home in red .
Only so much of that an SN child can take before they give up.
DD totally gave up and didn't see the point anymore and is now looking at scraping 2s

It seems to be that the whole shebang of targets/expected progress/SATS/levels/spreadsheets/data etc which take up so much time ultimately arises from the systematic undermining of the professionalism and competence of the teaching profession.

My dd didn't receive all her SATS results and we were confidently informed that it won't affect transition into secondary school as they will send over teacher assessment data instead.

Which rather begs the question that if TA is good enough for children who didn't sit the sats/receive results, why on earth isn't it good enough for all of them?

Speaking to parents whose children in the same situation have gone onto different secondary schools, it seems that each school has dealt with this lack of data differently. Most have used CAT and internal assessment to ascertain what set to put the child in, and are using the grades predicted by computer systems very loosely. One has set targets etc only using SATS results, and has informed parents that there's nothing they can do about it.

Which rather begs the question of why bother doing CATS tests or marking anything then?

I agree noble flight paths are an absolute crock of shite. In the absence of any other system that would be more provably reliable, it would seem most sensible to rely on teacher assessment and feedback (with moderation etc) to inform parents of how children are doing.

In PE, don't think my son had a good attitude, he certainly didn't make any effort and precious little progress! He did end up with 9A*s, 3As and a B for GCSE so all was not lost!

Blimey, spanieleyes - my ds's school weren't remotely bothered by his PE grade. The teacher specified that he had a good attitude, made a good effort and was making good progress (so the fact he still wasn't up to much and was miles off his supposedly "expected" grade was not a problem!).

nor of any schools which would insist a PE teacher give a physically challenged child a high grade just because a computer generated it from their English and maths SATs results

My son's school did. I was dragged in to discuss with his form tutor in Year 7 why he was behind his target grades in PE and art. They were aghast when

1. I said I wasn't bothered
2. I said he would never achieve the target grades set as he was dyspraxic ( and also had ASD which affected his participation in group sports too!)

He dropped art asap and his PE teacher eventually gave up, let him sit and work out scores/averages/statistics and just gave him a grade at the end of the year for turning up!

Flightpaths are ridiculous, assessment grades dubious and teachers usually smile, nodd and make them up!

teacherhead.com/2018/06/18/how-can-we-measure-and-report-progress-meaningfully/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Oh, I don't know, noblegiraffe - I think it's only the English and maths teachers who really suffer from a parental belief that teachers should know where their children are at and should be, because these are the areas tested at the end of primary school and which most strongly affect a child's ability to move on smoothly to post-16 education. I don't know any parents who are bothered if, eg, their child's PE or art grade are miles off an obviously ridiculous minimum expected grade - nor of any schools which would insist a PE teacher give a physically challenged child a high grade just because a computer generated it from their English and maths SATs results.

Thanks piggy. That's useful to know, and of course my aim is to engage and support as much as I can. (I think you may have misunderstood my comment about 5 grade 4s - it's not that this is bad, it's that 5 grade 4s or above is the benchmark used, and while the national average is 60% of pupils getting this, this school's results are 40% - and I'm a good enough statistician to know that's not a bad performance on the day, or a few of the brighter kids being ill, or whatever. The latest Ofsted report suggests there's a problem at the HoD level in some subjects - my impression when I went round the school was that maths and science are okay, but there may be issues with some of the other key subjects.)

But I don't want to derail the thread - just as a parent facing the issue of potential low expectations being projected onto my child, it's one that I feel very personally. And it doesn't matter really what level the "falling short of what they could achieve" is - whether it's a child bright enough to get grades good enough for university being pulled below that, or a child who should get 5 grade 4s or thereabouts, who'd go on to a decent apprenticeship scheme, but is falling short of that because they've been told they can't achieve it. Don't get me wrong - teachers are over-stretched, lacking in resources and funding and what they achieve is a miracle. But there is a culture (enforced on teachers by external pressures) of "this kid is doing okay, and I only have the time to firefight the issues with the kids who are demonstrably not doing okay", which is very hard for parents who think "but in today's economic climate, just 'okay' isn't going to get my child into a secure position as an adult."

I think the difference between myself and noble is that

• she, as a teacher, doesn't want to give info to parents that might be misleading/inaccurate, and thus, because no system will ever be 80/90-100%, would prefer not to attempt to quantify

• I, as a parent, whilst appreciating the above, feel that a teacher's best guess is likely to be considerably better than my best guess, and thus I would rather have a teacher's best guess than nothing.

Would that be fair noble ?

But noblegiraffe - that's always been the case and probably always will be. Parents have always interpreted their children's reports on the back of what they think of the teacher and what they think of the quality of the school in general. Obviously, parental opinions are, like teachers' opinions, not exactly entirely objective!! Opinion on school is probably based partly on Ofsted reports and exam results, and partly on local gossip; and opinions on teachers based on children's comments and parental gossip... and possibly the state of the child's school books and any signs that the teacher has ever looked at them.

I'm not sure how honest a school or teacher would ever be with parents if they were not convinced they were going to be able to teach the whole curriculum, or if they thought a class was underperforming as a whole because of the teacher!

noblegiraffe - I get that flightpaths are ludicrous. However, it would really help if, rather than continuing to flog that dead horse, you set out what you would be willing to communicate to parents to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of their child. Give us an example of a noblegiraffe report to a parent on how their child is doing in your subject.

So what are we agreed on?

1. Telling pupils and parents target grades based on KS2 SATs isn't particularly helpful.

2. Schools 'predicting' future GCSE grades down to a single grade (or worse a 5+ or 6-) anywhere before the end of y10 is daft as it implies a level of accuracy that is just impossible.

3. Schools giving a 'working at' GCSE grade in KS3 is also daft as for many subjects the curriculum is different in KS3 to GCSE. e.g. You can't be 'working at' a 2 in History if you are doing Tudors which aren't on the GCSE syllabus.

4. Parents do however like to have some idea how their child is getting on, and for many (most?) something nebulous like 'good progress' doesn't really cut it.

What we don't agree on

A) How progress / current attainment can be reported in a helpful meaningful way for parents without giving a false sense of accuracy, and in a way that teachers feel makes sense and they aren't just making up numbers to please parents and SLT.

I am hoping tnat has stopped : gone quiet for a while...

fermats, honestly, I sympathise. But those grades will in all likelihood be generated from already done KS2 assessements (in itself a highly flawed idea but it is what it is). In many people's worlds 5 grade 4s is a pretty good outcome. If your child is a good student, works hard and has parental support, in all likelihood he'll continue to be motivated. Some so called 'crap schools' are actually better at this than you might think (tend to have smaller year group sizes , for example) so try to keep an open mind for the meantime. Sorry, that's not really advice. You might be in luck and your DC might end up at a school where they don't give out target grades as soon as students walk in the door. They do exist...

Make sure the receiving school is fully informed about the dyslexia : communication between schools at transition can be less thorough than what one might expect.

This thread still droning along with pointless and diversionary argument interspersed with personal attacks, I see.

No, exactly that... the govt will be measuring hwr progress from KS2 to GCSE. The interim data to arriev there is what we are (largely discussing) which is what Ofsted said they will not be looking at.

Schools, I guess are free to do the interevening bit how they like : hopefully it will become less backbreaking and more sensible if/when Ofsted stop looking at it.

One of the problems, as I see it, is that schools are judged on how many students make expected or better than expected progress.

Those judgements are imposed by government and then used by LAs and OFSTED. So unless this announcement by Ofsted means that no one is going to now judge schools based on outcomes, expected progress how else will it be measured?

Gov judges progress based on KS2 SATS and with so much at stake you can see why schools are keen to closely watch students and attempt to track progress.

I wish someone on here would provide an alternative, rather than teacher's judgement, because that isn't measurable or consistent is it? It will also be subjective.

The gov won't be compiling league tables based on progress measured against Mrs Miggin's opinion of how Sophie is doing in English will they?

It's a shame your thread seems to be being "me-railed" by someone with a bee in their bonnet, noble.

As a parent I'm interested to see this discussed. Like several other posters much earlier in the thread, I have a child with SEN (dyslexia) and one of my ongoing worries is that if he gets labelled in secondary as "headed for 5 grade 4s" he'll genuinely believe that's all he's capable of and get utterly demoralised (which is quite a real worry as he's been allocated a place at a school which is missing the national average for GCSEs by a long, long way - frankly, he's drawn the short straw, and there's no way round it, it's a pretty shit school).

Have you got any practical suggestions on how to keep a child motivated when the school is probably going to tell them they're a bit shit and destined for failure?

Anyway noble as another experienced, skilled, educated professional, I agree with what you've said on this thread.
We've all always known what crap current attainment grades based on flight paths are.
I'd like to say good riddance but I suspect my SLT will be hanging on a bit longer regardless.

faux concern
Secret glee
Goady much?
You're being quite unpleasant cool