What are your thought about this year 7 child’s school report ? Is it awful ?

Seems a bit 'strict' that basically anything below 70% is automatically 'below expected' and anything below 60% is 'insufficient.'

I'd focus on the bits on the right rather than the below expected etc

Also there is nothing more off-putting for a child than a parent takinf ownership of his/her learning. Back off or you run the very real risk of turning him odd education for many years.

YABVVU. He has exemplary grades for attitude to Learning, behaviour, classwork. These are the only things within his control. He is clearly dou f his absolute best and you should be applauding that, not telling him he needs to pull his socks up. Poor kid

Thinking about his low grades for MFL homework.
I wonder whether they have been learning vocab / learning verb declensions and then being tested and scoring poorly on tests?
That would tie in with poor revision techniques / time spent.

With MFL the verbs and vocab are very important. If you can't use avoir correctly or don't know the words for amusing/difficult/boring then it is hard to progress.

To me this still all leads to doing nothing over the summer, but start off y8 with you paying more attention to homework and tests.

Is there literally no explanation of the 'language' of the school reports anywhere? In their planner / Year 7 handbook / KS3 handbook / something on the website / a letter home that your DC forgot to give you - ?

Please don’t get him to work all summer. You may be doing stuff that he doesn’t thane to do yet, therefore concentrating on the wrong areas.
Can I ask is ‘this child’ your child? Or a grandchild? Etc. (Sorry to be nosey but it would make a difference).

Please, let him enjoy his summer holiday! He doesn't need to be working on anything until September. Making him study now sems like a punishment and he hasn't done anything wrong!

How to prepare for assessments:

1. Your child is to tell you whenever he has a test coming up
2. As well as asking him about the content he needs to learn, ask him (or look in his exercise books) the answering skills he has been taught. e.g. For geography it might be 'Compare the benefits and disadvantages of palm oil'. So as well as listing them, he will also need to explain why and come down on one side of the argument. Just knowing the pros and cons won't be enough. Another e.g. For drama my DD has to be able to write about a performance she has seen and its affect on the audience. There is a list of drama-techniques she is meant to consider (set, costumes etc), so I make sure she can list them. Maths you revise by doing practice questions, school may have a mymaths subscription, or you can get CGP KS3 maths workbooks.
3. Get into habit of revising for every test, even if only for an hour.
4. Try to see the tests after they have been marked as it will help inform revision for the future.

I am guessing that this is your first child at secondary, so I hope the overall advice you've taken on board from everyone is here is calm down, it's ok! Your son is obviously engaged at school, he will get better at homework and revision and the school will help him do that, there's no big rush for you to get him doing more work, or buying study guides. Wait until the new term, have a chat with teachers and ask if there's anything he could specifically work on - you setting him work when you don't know this isn't particularly helpful (you don't even know which books are most useful!)

In the mean time, give him a pat on the back, recognise what is actually going well!

(And don't forget he might not even do Geography for GCSE )

One further point. He appears to be doing less well in both the languages.
This may not matter to you of course, but if the school may make it compulsory for him to do a language for GCSE that might be an area you wish to pay more attention to next year.
Note also that attitude of schools may change towards languages, so even if it isn't compulsory now, it doesn't mean it won't be for your DS.

Hi I'm a head of maths in a secondary school - this report is not uncommon for students who had excellent results in primary.
In secondary the challenge we as teachers face is teaching many new concepts which can be far removed from what they were learning in primary. It will take students quite a period of time to consolidate many new concepts.
Year 7 is quite a change in routine for students and they lack experience in how to prepare properly for exams and how to organise themselves and their workload.
Depending on the policy assessment of the school the calculation of grades may be based on different percentage weightings for exams, coursework and classwork - am sure if you email each of the subject teachers they will explain how they calculate the grade for the report.
I would not be overly concerned but perhaps moving forward it would be prudent to look at the students exercise book and find out the dates of exams and tests and support the student in how to better prepare for assessments.
The line of development in secondary is not linear - students are not more intelligent on a Friday at the end of the week compared to a Monday at the beginning of the week. Also teachers have to prepare on average 200 + reports which does not afford them a huge amount of personalised feedback so why not go and meet the teachers of subjects you are concerned about.
Also boys in general tend to be behind the girls in years 7,8 and 9 (well so the research suggests)
In summary don't panic it's a while yet before they start preparation for GCSE's

Mumski Not quite right.

The 'minimum expected grades' are 7s and 8s so presumably they don't think he is keeping up with those high aspirations.

What the report doesn't show is any 'current working at' or 'current predictions / flightpaths'. (Even though these aren't particularly accurate at y7 anyway).

So the OP doesn't know whether the DS is one grade behind or 4 grades.

I would say this is an excellent report with the slight exception of the few subjects marked down for homework which is something that can be worked on next year. Ignore the column about progress as that will be based on Sats results. I'm guessing this child scored highly in year six Sats and therefore has very high target grades.

Almost all predicted grades are 7 and 8 (equate to A and A* in old measures) so the child's target grades must be mainly 9's hence the progress showing as below expected.

Year 7 is a tough transitional year and this child has done well. I would expect that a little more focus next year will result in a few 9's at the end of year 8.

What on earth is the point of giving these grade predictions in Year 7?? Why does it benefit a Year 7 child to be told "We're expecting you to get this in four years time." They're either going to feel incredibly pressurised or complacent.

My DD in Year 10 is predicted 6s and 7s - she doesn't believe she is capable of getting 6s in Maths and Science and basically doesn't put in the effort as she just thinks she will be disappointed. She may well end up with 4s rather than the 5s that should be well within reach. Being constantly told she "ought" to be getting a 6 rather than just encouraging her to try her best has done no good at all.

The predicted grades are based on the SATs. It's really not unusual for y7 not to be achieving their predicted grades, especially those who scored well as the expectations are high. Secondary school work can be very different to primary school, they're taught to the SATs in y6 but Maths and English curriculums at secondary are different and can take some adjusting to. Also the variety of subjects, the moving around the school, different teachers etc. Y7 is really more about making sure kids get used to the school environment and that kids from different primaries all have the same basic knowledge in eg science or geography.

Agree that 9-1 revision guides will be too advanced, they're for Gcse years, you need KS3 guides.

Also agree that given the attitude grades are good, and the bullying earlier in the year, there really isn't anything here to be concerned about.

Progress is below because he's being assessed against made up flight paths.
Plus our experience is every teacher interprets things differently anyway. DD achieved the highest possible attainment grade in one subject on her report, it was way above her target and her teacher still marked this as expected progress. And in other subjects she was meeting her target and being marked as below expected progress. That's why I suggest ignoring the progress value!

Why is progress below for subjects where effort etc is all good or excellent? I would be asking what he needs to do to improve x

If he got greater depth in SATs, he'll have to achieve really highly to meet expected progress. And of course they were in English and maths so don't necessarily extrapolate to other subjects anyway So I'd ignore the progress and focus on the effort and attitude which are brilliant!

I do think you're being a bit over the top to get him doing extra work when you don't even know what it is he needs to improve on, by the way. I'd be a bit crestfallen if I'd worked hard all year (all those "Good"s!) but my parents decided I was actually rubbish and didn't make enough effort based on a progress system that they didn't understand. Give the lad a break!

I don't think it's bad for year 7, and the effort is really good. Just a bit of tweaking on homework, rather than "policing". I'd bring it up at your next parents' evening with the particular teachers and ask for areas for improvement - what did they say at your last one?

It looks to me like your child has a good attitude to learning and makes a lot of effort, so you should be telling them that they've done well this year, it's a big change, it will take a while to get used to being organised for homework and revision - it's only Y7, plenty of time!

BTW, our school stopped doing written reports (we just get grids like yours) as they were just too many to do (especially for RE teachers who have to teach absolutely everyone), they instead started to do parents' evenings once a term, which is better, I think, because you get more regular, personal feedback.