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

Yes, well a grade using the same system. It's pretty much got the same amount of flaws as marking A as meaning excellent, B as very good, C as average, D as below average and E as well below average which is what we got.

Tbh you can look at a trajectory and extrapolate it down at that stage.

DD's starting yr7 in September. What are flight paths?

Current GCSE grade in year 8?

I would say they have their use along sides other methods. If that's all you get, then no, it isn't good enough.
However alongside say comments (as someone put earlier "They're struggling at understanding fractions"), looking at past improvement, possibly (for teacher only) how they're improving relative to the rest of the class and other things they are useful.

I was talking to a friend not very long ago. She was telling me about her ds who is playing the clarinet. He's apparently absolutely brilliant and she's quite put out that the school hasn't acknowledged how special he is. Thing is I know a bit about grades. And I know that doing grade 1 after 3 years and taking 2 more years to do grade 2 is well below what you'd expect. She has no knowledge of music grades at all, and thinks that they are doing far better than 90% of children would. I'm not going to say anything, but I do think the music teacher should have given a little expectation managing and let them know it is not outstanding progress. At some point they're going to discover it, and it'll probably hit the child hard enough to stop them playing.

That's how I feel on school subjects. I have no idea what level my dc are working at. If they said "they're currently at this level in year 8, then that means nothing to me. Does it mean they'll be scraping a (old money) E at GCSE or pushing an A*? Should I be encouraging them to drop it when they ask, or saying it could be an A-level subject.
You could say that I don't need to know. But in which case, why do I need to know anything about their education, except they're there and not being a pain?

The point flight paths miss, to me, is where it is taken as the be all and end all. Where if a child is coasting and hitting their target it isn't picked up that they could fly over the target. Or if a child has for whatever reason started struggling, they're not put in the position of being thought not to be trying because if they were they'd get be doing better.

No way is going to be perfect to apply to imperfect schools and varying children. Any method of assessing that might suit one child may be a disaster for another.
What are OFSTED suggesting instead if they don't believe in this one, because unless they come up with a solution that is better for most children then surely this imperfect method is better than just not using anything?

noble but it's what we've got with all its faults. What are you suggesting, there should be no qualifications because they are all flawed?

TheFallen, I was satisfied with what we got. Current grade, based on regular tests along with what the (new) number grades meant at GCSE level and a chart showing trajectories of all the grades which might be given, throughout each year, up to GCSEs assuming linear progress. You could see in subsequent years whether your child was beating the trajectory or was level with it or whether their progress was slower which allowed for further discussion.

For interest, what data would you like to have about your (say) year 8 child in Maths?

But that doesn't mean they should be scrapped, noble. It means the methodology should be tightened up.

Otherwise, beyond 'trusting teachers' which I'm afraid IME are not beyond reproach, there is little to verify, to parents that their child is doing OK at school or that any shortfall in learning is successfully being addressed.

Surely you can see that is not right? What other profession is there which has little or no form of accountability for the work done? (...well apart from politician...)

N.B. My child's first set of SAT scores at age 7 surprised their teachers greatly. The teacher decided to use teacher assessment to downgrade the score from the SAT papers (which I got a copy of). My child achieved well during their next set of SATs too. The down grading did not reflect the progress that was actually made.

It happens.

But you could still get it wrong, Michael. Because students can still surprise you. Such rigidity regarding the believed superiority of your experience versus standardised data collection displays the type of lack in humility I experienced from educational professionals. These are the experienced professionals that were effectively managing my child's attainment in order to cling onto funding.

There is a need for transparency which does involves a degree of standardisation in order to act as a safeguard against this. Because your experience only goes so far. And anyone with any integrity should recognise this and actively be involved in making improvements to mapping progress. Instead we get teachers acting as gatekeepers to marks of attainment and progression.

I use knowledge from:

• exam board training
• examiners’ reports
• past papers marked and returned
• work done in previous years by my classes
• grade boundaries from previous years
• internal moderation within my department team

to check my marking/assessment of students. This is more than an exam marker has to do, by the way (I’ve done that too). I can’t guarantee grades but I can very easily “spot” a potential A/B/U grade student. I don’t need any data to tell me that apart from the evidence of my own eyes. Assessment matters but only if you know why you’re assessing and what you’re assessing for, and assessing for a “data checkpoint” isn’t a good reason.

Michaelbaubles

But what are you basing that on given that nobel appears to be saying that only 56% of gcses in history were reliably marked anyway? Where are you benchmarking against?

Yes, titchy. Of course I do! And I understand its limitations! It is still useful as it is an indication of how much progress will be made assuming progress is linear!

Do you realise how patronising it is to assume parents don't know anything? My child was given a Statement of SEN based on concerns assuming linear progression. Thankfully my child's progress was not linear. There were a series of 'light bulb' moments when everything came together and they improved exponentially. Unfortunately that achievement took longer to come to light as the teacher were not putting my D.C. in for the same assessments as the rest of the class or giving my child the same degree of teacher input in order to realise this. It is something I realised at home years earlier. Only when the Statement was ceased and additional funding removed was my DC's progression and actual attainment fully acknowledged.

So I know full well how corrupt trajectories can be. Without them or assessments, though, the reasoning behind certain decisions is even more opaque. Which is what I don't want. Where there is data and projections they can be questioned.

How do teachers attempt to predict grades for 6th form or university?

Ask the teacher who’s teaching them. I can give you a very accurate idea of what I think students will get based on what they’ve done in my lessons so far. I don’t need any prior data or a flight path to tell me that.

Maybe you should work at improving the reliability of methodology data collection and trajectory plotting, if you think it is all so meaningless.

Do you actually what a flight path is that we're talking about? A flight path assumes absolute linear progress from ks2 sats to gcse. I'm sure most teachers are actually pretty good a plotting the direction of individual students without using fixed flight paths.

If GCSE marking is that inconsistent, why bother having GCSEs at all?

What do you propose instead then noble?

So why do you teach, noble?

I like the idea of knowing where my child is now, and where he is headed.

but what I seem to get is whether he is on target to get where he is predicted to be. With the prediction based on his SATS score in a different subject where the teacher also doesn't know the grading for the GCSE anyway as its a new exam.

I've never heard of Flight Paths, apart from in the aeroplane sense, and I have daughters in Y9 and Y5. DD1 does get graded in all subjects at the end of the year though and I find that a heck of a lot more useful than the "meeting expectations/exceeding expectations" reports at primary school. I used to find National Curriculum levels extremely clear and informative.

How can anyone assess progress if we don't know what progress looks like?

What is good progress too one teacher will be adequate to another. So there's no way of standardising progress or achievement or attainment? How does anyone monitor progress in schools or amongst groups of students or for individual students?

None of it is perfect. Hopefully by blind marking some tests, by externally validating and moderating schools can attempt to remove teacher bias. No, none of it can predict an outcome at GCSE but it just seems to random for individual teachers to try to describe progress at parents' evenings. How can students make any decisions? How do teachers attempt to predict grades for 6th form or university?

And how on earth can Ofsted justify the removal of some HTs based on quality of data only now to say data is meaningless so we'll get rid of it?

Data about whether an intervention for SEN is working isn’t going to be provided by the bog standard school data cycle.

And maybe there should be more consistency of data between different pupil groups. If pupils considered as having SEN are assessed in a totally different way to those not considered to have SEN you are not even getting comparable data between the two groups. This is when the very definition of which children are seen as having SEN involves a comparison to their peers.

I never said it was, noble. However, the principles of predicting progress in order to secure and allocate budgets are the same.

Maybe you should work at improving the reliability of methodology data collection and trajectory plotting, if you think it is all so meaningless. Because there is very much a need for budgets to be secured and allocated where they are going to have the most positive impact.