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

Having a look at this thread from time to time to not admire the subtle teacher trashing going on such as parallels being drawn with child abusing priests...really unpleasant.
Before I retired from Secondary FFT estimates of GCSE grades (predictions or targets as interpreted by SLT) were widely in use (I don't know if that's still the case). They were about 80% accurate on an individual student basis. One year I could have (by chance) a number of students wrongly "predicted" D grades when in fact they were capable of A grades. Result - well dome born! The next the other way round - poor performance born, you need to up your game. Very very annoying, especially when it was clear to see that those forecasts were wrong for those students across the whole curriculum.
Now I work in FE and yes, I meet and help many learners who have been let down by the system. But it's not because their progress wasn't properly tracked. There are a whole range of reasons (the most common being not having had a proper Maths teacher in Y10/11).
The worst thing about all these tracking systems is the way they can reduce living, learning children to a set of sometimes arbitrary data. It's dehumanising.

Yes, mine have MEGs , too : and it is the same for every subject which is really bizarre (and different from the school I teach in). This really does highlight how bonkers this sort of thing is. He could (might) get a 9 in Spanish, for example, but will be lucky to get a C in IT and his MEG is 6. I guess you could say 'on average' it works as 6 is probably what he will get in 4 or so of his 9 subjects...but it leads his IT teacher to , frankly, bullly him and his Spanish teacher (who needs no particular asistance in this art!) to be complacent and to not push him.

I am not sure I have the answers, but I sure have plenty of questions!

My Ds's school have megs (minimum expected grades) I think they use the fischer family trust to help work these out.

He is year 10 and currently undergoing assessment for ASD. At his last parents evening his computing teacher told him that they expected 100% in his exams. He had got 95% in his mock but they decided it was too easy so took 10% off all the students final marks. The teacher spent the whole time telling us that he was a student that he expected better than 85% from. I just sat there stunned that they would put so much pressure on a child going through a difficult time.

Or maybe inspectors will just apply their own 'professional judgement', making assessments that are not 'easily reportable'. Their methodology only to be scrutinised by other inspectors...

Schools are judged by Ofsted. Which takes us nicely full circle to the OP. The person in charge of judging schools from the outside thinks flight paths are nonsense and doesn't want to look at schools' internal data. There you go.

It is incredibly naive to think school inspectors will be happy to rely purely on teacher's 'professional judgement' regarding grading assessments and reporting.

The whole purpose of inspection is to apply a level scrutiny to the work being undertaken. Anything less makes a mockery of inspection. Added to this inspectors will not be immune from professional pride just as teachers aren't. So they will push back in order to make the inspection more meaningful...

My dd got a 7 in biology and chemistry mocks this week, she was told that her scores was extremely disappointing and she needs to revise more, as her targets are 8s. Only these aren't her targets, they are the schools.

Your DD getting an ‘A’ grade is amazing and I hope she doesn’t feel like that isn’t good enough. A prime example of why I don’t like this system.

noblegiraffe don’t you mean ‘Fisher Price’!??

My dd got a 7 in biology and chemistry mocks this week, she was told that her scores was extremely disappointing and she needs to revise more, as her targets are 8s. Only these aren't her targets, they are the schools.

National Curriculum levels were abolished in 2014 - the laudable intention was to do away with the “labelling” effect of assigning numbers to children and instead to encourage more meaningful assessment and feedback.

However... schools were very used to spreadsheets and management reports which demanded simple numerical measures. In many cases schools simply replaced levels with “grades” which superficially resemble GSCE grades (which conveniently switched from alphabetic to numeric form).

But these numbers are not GCSE grades, they’re just... numbers. Assessments are not standardised across schools (or sometimes even within schools). Teachers are required to enter numbers into systems and spreadsheets, and we do our best, but the numbers are meaningless so we have no choice but to make them up.

I was stunned when I found out that secondary schools use English and Maths SATS results to 'predict grades' for French, Geography, DT and goodness knows what else.

Well no, schools don't. The government and Ofsted do this. They used to work out value added based on it but now it's progress 8 and attainment 8.

It's Ofsted that has forced schools to produce more and more data to prove to them that students at all stages made progress. Now suddenly it's all being thrown out. But it won't last. It never does.

Schools are judged by Ofsted. Which takes us nicely full circle to the OP. The person in charge of judging schools from the outside thinks flight paths are nonsense and doesn't want to look at schools' internal data. There you go.

Glad that Ofsted are going to reduce/eliminate the importance they attach to flight paths, internal progress data and fancy spread sheets in general.

I was stunned when I found out that secondary schools use English and Maths SATS results to 'predict grades' for French, Geography, DT and goodness knows what else. The head at one of the secondary schools we went to look round proudly announced that her school starts talking to children about 'where they are' in relation to their GCSE targets as soon as they step into the door in Y7.

Which made me think why bother with GCSEs then if it's all been decided at aged 11. Several Y11 children I know have spent the whole of secondary being told that they're 'not where they should be' because their SATS levels were used to conjure up a high predicted GCSE grade. Others families have spent years telling the school that their child doesn't understand something/isn't making much progress, although it's 'fine' for the school because their SATS results 'predicted' a lower grade.

Utterly bonkers.

Good heavens at the abuse analogy.

Why are teachers implicitly more trustworthy than priests? Or should the same rigour of safeguards apply to both organisations?

Professionals need to be judged, independently, by people outside of the profession.

Yes, but the basis, I would have thought in deciding who would have to go, would take into consideration the reliability of the data which is available. That is, not based on a prediction made regarding GCSE potential that was made in year 7.

However, the act of making a variety of data available, promotes discussion. Which is good for transparency and professional development.

Good heavens at the abuse analogy. Anyway...
Schools are accountable for exam results. Teachers are accountable for exam results. People lose their jobs over exam results.

TheFallen
With one the teacher openly complains and states the limitations with the other any limitations are not admitted as it would reflect on their capabilities as a professional.

What do you mean by professional judgement? What is the process that takes a mark on a test that is not a GCSE, and turns it into a GCSE grade, if it is not professional judgement? And how does that differ from a teacher using the same assessment and telling you whether your child is making good progress or not? What is the advantage of one over the other?

We’re all held accountable every day, by other teachers

In other words it's a closed shop. For initiates only. Teachers will follow their own interests, like many others do.

Like the church, for decades, feeling able to investigate and deal with priests accused of abuse....

No. However the criteria for assessment will be less transparent. As I said earlier, when teachers complain over tasks they find onerous, the limitations and flaws over various types of reporting become apparent. Yet, if they were only required to use professional judgement there would be less vocal complaining. The varying methodology would be much more opaque, the meaningfulness or lack of, remaining undisclosed.

Professional judgement is open to critique and scrutiny though - but not by parents. In fact, most teachers invite it - I’ll often ask a colleague what they think of an exam answer or piece of work. We moderate as a department. We get observed by other members of staff. They drop into lessons, look at folders, read exam papers we’ve set. There’s nothing I do during any day I could keep secret even if I wanted to (which I don’t). We’re all held accountable every day, by other teachers. And that’s what a profession is, surely? I have no metric to know whether my GP is any good, but I trust that the medical profession has its own ways of judging GPS and weeding out those who are failing.

What I can't get my head around are teachers on here telling us to trust teachers' professional judgements whilst then admitting to making up and plucking out of thin air meaningless figures on students reports??? Either you are professional or you make things up?

If a school only uses made up data to compile flight paths and then set unmoderated tests that aren't marked properly in order to set targets for students then yes, I would agree that is poor.

But not all schools do that. My children's school worked with another school to set exam questions across year groups that could be assessed to give an accurate assessment of where that student was at that time but also a value to plot onto a flight path.

So if a level 5 at yr 6 ends on an A* at yr 11 then by yr 10 they should be looking at a B, say. Yrs 9,8 and 7 were then given values ascribed by school. It worked.

If I compare to when I was at school we got marked A - G with + and - so A, A-, B+,B,B- and so on. These grades were given from 1st year to 5th form and for 2 years at 6th form.

In 1st year I could get an A, 2nd year B+, 3rd year A-, 4th year C.. That tells you nothing. Was I progressing? Was a C in 4th year better or worse than a B+ in 2nd year?

Marking like this makes little sense either.

In fact, I said my assessment is not easy to report because I collect a lot of data.