Y7 assessements - any Secondary parents/teachers able to help?

My daughters' secondary adjusts targets at the end of Y7. Until then I would recommend to tell your daughter that the targets are nonsense and she should ignore them. How well others are doing is a much better indicator of where your child stands.

My mother used to laugh at some grades I got and tell me the teacher had it completely wrong and was clearly not fit for the job. It helped me a lot. It is all subjective and can change in both directions.

not just about passing exams

Totally agree. Another thing to thank coke-snorting Gove for.

Our school don't set the benchmarks themselves

They do.

They choose the system to punt the results into.

Yeo it's a crap system I think.

I'm a school governor. My DD got really high SATS marks. At Secondary all her benchmarks are 9's. Her benchmarks! Frigging 9's! It's impossible.

Shes now in Y10 she's hit a few 8's and 9's but is nearly always 'below' progress even in subjects she's doing well at. It sucks, for her, for me and for the Progress 8 at the school.

Our school don't set the benchmarks themselves - they are churned our from a computerised system right at the beginning of Y7.

My ds is Y8. He did ok in his SATS but not amazing. His benchmarks are really achievable because of it and his reports always look much better.

I try and ignore it but it irks me. Especially when the LGB talk about improving Progress 8!

THE new OFSTED framework is supposedly far less data driven and will look at the school as a whole. However I don't think a focus on extra curricular offerings is fair on teaching staff. We get nothing extra for providing extra curricular opportunities including trips, clubs etc.

Accountability has no doubt improved some schools and has meant more students leave with English and Maths qualifications. However at what cost. All non academic courses have pretty much disappeared. Students who used to thrive in hairdressing, mechanics etc no longer even get that opportunity. Funding cuts have to take some blame for this, and so does the focus on progress 8.

It seems OFSTED know this and are aiming at recognising schools like DD’s that foster extracurricular learning opportunities and not rigidly looking at the test etc. However how you can measure this is not clear. I hope this doesn’t get to become a box ticking exercise too www.gov.uk/government/news/ofsteds-new-inspection-arrangements-to-focus-on-curriculum-behaviour-and-development

I went to a (state) secondary in the 80s as well, and it was fab. I realise not all of them were! I wonder if what all the scrutiny has done is to help improve the really atrocious schools, but simultaneously straitjacket the excellent ones?? There just seems to be so little focus now on fostering a love of learning and on critical thinking and learning how to learn. Of course, all secondaries are ultimately going to guided in what they teach by the exam boards, but in Years 7-9 at least I think there should be the freedom to teach for inspiration, not to follow a flightpath.

Same here. DD had high predicted grades - so she couldn’t exceed her targets only ‘managed’ targets

Friends with low targets could exceed them so it looked like they were doing better (which they were, based on individual targets)

So if predicted A* she would be on track or Good
Predicted a C but handed in a B paper they exceed -

Disappointing but that’s the way they do it

You need to tell her not to worry about it and you need to not worry about it or you will stress her out. It really evens out in the end. My twins got 120 in maths sats but went to a different high schools. Based on his sats my son was given a grade of 5 by end of year 8 to achieve. My daughter was somehow reassessed on entry and give a grade of 3 to achieve by end of year 8. My son got a 3 by the end of first term (not sure how) but by end of 2nd term he was still on a 3 so had a warning sign on his report (and by end of year still a 3 so not sure what he has been doing!) - teacher said not to worry about it - that a 3 was fine as that the warning sign was only because he has been set a high grade of 5. My daughter ended up with a 2.5 by the end of the year so in theory was on track to exceed her 3.
BUT more importantly my children are not worried about it. The teachers said not to worry about it to me and I have told my children its not a big deal.

Ours aren't "set in stone". They're raised if the student is making greater progress (though never lowered).

Thanks teacher-maths, I know it is measuring progress in that sense, but it does make you question whether the SATS scores are always fully reflective of a child’s potential. For instance If some kids are doing way better than expected in GCSE, as predicted by their year 6 SATS, you wonder whether the child might have been capable of better SATS scores in the first place. Perhaps I’m too cynical!
I agree Tashkent, our eldest attended independent secondary, and did extremely well. There was never any talk of nonsensical targets like this, set in stone from day one. It seems ridiculous that state schools are measuring progress in this way.

Interesting @WyfOfBathe

At dds MAT, you cannot get lower than 4 on your flight path. You can see where off-rolling comes into play here!

Sorry, I know that's no help to you OP, but it just makes me quite sad really that state schools don't have the freedom to operate in a similar way.

Having gone to a state secondary school in the 1980s, when schools were free to teach (or not teach) whatever they wanted free of measurement and scrutiny, I am certain that today's schools are much better, despite their flaws. Targets are a necessary evil to make sure that all children are making progress. If they can be improved, then great, but if they were scrapped altogether I think we'd be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I'm a secondary teacher, in a school with a very economically/socially diverse catchment. Some of our y7s went to primaries with SATs boosters, 11+ boosters, lots of private tutoring, etc. Others went to primaries performing well below the national average. Their KS3/GCSE targets tell me more about what primary they went to than what their potential is.

I've also had a student with a target of 3 in GCSE French, because she did poorly in her English SATs... having moved here in year 6, from France!

The best I can tell you is to ignore the targets and flight paths and help your DD to achieve her best.

DS is at an independent secondary, and although it's very academic, there's so far been no talk of targets, no flightpaths, no predictions, and I know that assessment in the first couple of years is very low key. They just spend their time getting on with learning stuff and enjoying their subjects. Sorry, I know that's no help to you OP, but it just makes me quite sad really that state schools don't have the freedom to operate in a similar way. Having been through the state primary system and knowing lots of teachers very well, I know how frustrating it is for everyone involved - pupils, parents, teachers and school management. On the plus side, your daughter sounds pretty grounded, and you have a much healthier attitude than all the parents who will be fretting over their children's flightpaths because they don't understand the system.

We are on Wales and don’t have SATs. We have welsh national tests which they do ever year from year 2 onwards. There’s no tutoring or pressure just a letter saying no holiday will be authorised that week. I think the kids may do a practice paper at some point but it’s just something that happens once a year and there’s no hoohaa about it. Parents don’t even compare scores or even ask each other about them!!
My 2 eldest are in year 7 and 8. They had targets on their reports but were competent different for each subject and seemed to reflect their ability eg DS1 had very very high English and maths and humanities targets but very low art and PE ones.

Progress 8 seems to be the new buzz word around here, but it almost makes it seem like the primary schools are badly failing.

Not sure where you've got this idea from. Progress 8 just measures the progress of students with the same average SATS scores using their top 8 GCSE scores. (double weighted maths and English so may not be 8 different subjects).

The more I read about these barmy state school measures, the more I despair. Progress 8 seems to be the new buzz word around here, but it almost makes it seem like the primary schools are badly failing. It’s a ridiculous system.
Did you child’s school do CAT tests OP? I know some secondaries also use CATS data to help guide setting.

My DD plays a sport at regional level, and is generally good at most sports, but has never met her PE target because it's based on her English/Maths SATs score. I think she would have to play every different PE sport at close to elite level in order to meet it. To be fair though, it doesn't bother her one bit, because she understands where the target comes from and what it means.

It bothers me more because I can't proudly present her report to her grandparents to show how well she's doing ... it would take too long to explain it and its just easier not to.

The target grades are even more ridiculous when you try to apply them to subjects that they don't really correlate to.

One of DD's friends is an extremely talented artist. She is totally bemused that her target for Art is a 4. "Of course" that is based on her Y6 English SATS score. Success in reading and writing obviously being a good guide to artistic ability. (Yes I know there's more to the Art GCSE than being a good artist, but still ...)

Oh I agree noble re flight paths and targets being bollocks.

However schools are judged on the progress the kids make from their SATS. Therefore a pupil who has done well on SATS having higher targets than a pupil who got a lower score isn't an outrageous policy.

I'd happily scrap the whole lot!

It's a crap system but it's the system schools are judged on.

They’re not though. Schools aren’t judged about how many kids hit those made-up flightpaths at all. It’s a pile of meaningless bollocks.

What schools are actually judged on is how pupils do in their GCSEs compared to other pupils in the same year of entry who got the same (average) KS2 SATs results.

What these kids will actually get in their GCSEs probably bears no relation to flightpaths because the flightpaths are where someone has simply drawn a straight line from a KS2 result to a GCSE result - a prediction.

But a prediction based on what? No one who has sat the new KS2 SATs has actually sat the new GCSEs so we don’t know how they match up at all. The proportion of kids getting 4+ at GCSE will remain roughly stable, the proportion of kids getting ‘expected’ at KS2 seems to go up yearly.
Will schools be revising their flightpaths accordingly for each year group? I doubt that much thought goes into it at all.

In addition, different schools use different flightpaths. Because it’s all made up.

Ask the school what proportion of kids actually follow their flightpath. Or get those target grades set in Y7. I bet it’s less than half.