School not giving any context around exam scores.

Glad it’s not just me! I’m also frustrated at DD’s arbitrary exam results percentages which are utterly meaningless in isolation. We do get a year end report, usually in the first week of the holidays, which includes the class mean and year mean. None of these data points give any indication of whether DD is performing to her potential, making meaningful progress or where she sits on the ‘bell curve’. The median would be useful if you want to consider where your child sits in their year group, if you consider that a representative sample but it’s all feels so arbitrary to me. They do MidYis at her school too so really shouldn’t be too difficult to correlate her exam results … sometimes I feel they do these things just to say they do rather than harness the potential benefits …

In our school the percentage equates to a level ( the level description of all levels of all subjects is shared with parents ) and this is tracked against the pupil’s target level , which is also known to the parent since the start of the year .

Our indie always sends our school reports out on the last day - sometimes even the first Monday of the school holidays! It's not brilliant. Having said that there should never be surprises in a school report and ours is good at picking up the phone if there are issues.

No, sending reports on the last day is a deliberate choice to avoid parental complaints.

I know because my school did something like that once and for that reason!

This is nonsense for an independent - we get the score then translated to an equivalent 1-9 Grade. We have the median/mean and upper and lower quartile together with the MidYis. The report is then colour coded for your child as to where they are performing against the year group and their own MidYis score. Without the context both against their own expectation and the year - it is impossible to work out how they are doing.

I've taught at state schools in the UK and independent schools abroad. None gave reports on the last day of term. The UK schools I taught had a line on the reports encouraging parents to get in contact if they have questions about their child's report. Giving it on the last day sounds like an unusual system.

You're right that percentages are meaningless without context. For example I was stunned when I learnt that you "only" need 70% for a 1st class degree in the UK. But it's a lot harder to get 70 in the UK than in my country, where 70 is a C. It's not about comparing children. It's about knowing how your DC is doing compared to what's expected. I would definitely send an email.

Our school gives 'working at grade 3' or 6 or whatever. They're separate to tests. So if they're working at grade 3 in year 7, they're on track to get a 7 in the GCSEs.

I trust the school to set ability appropriate tests.

It’s the only meaningful measure of whether something is a good mark or a poor one. As the OP said, 75% means as much as “purple” otherwise. My DD is 10. If she scored 75% on the Further Maths A Level paper, she’d be a genius. On the Reception class test, not so much! It’s just getting context from the population data, rather than wanting to know that Emily did better than Susan.

It's not about caring how your child did against other children, it's finding out how THEY did.

So if your child comes back and says "I got 46 in the exam". Surely you'd ask out of what? Because 46/50 sounds really good. 46/200 doesn't.

But by finding out other scores that can also show how well they've performed.
46/50 when nearly everyone else got 50/50 suddenly doesn't sound as good.
46/200 looks a lot better when you find that no one else got about 32/200.

A number on it's own is as useless as a class position on it's own.
In year 8 I got 55% in my geography exam. In year 9 I got 82%. Was that an improvement? Actually I went down from 3rd in my class to 15th. If you'd had either of those numbers in isolation then you would have got a totally different view.

I was speaking to someone whose dc is year 9. They are picking options. The school has a policy of not saying how well they're doing against others-nor even at this point what level they are aiming at for GCSEs. Their dc wants to be a vet ideally. She has no idea whether this is a reasonable aim for her dc or a pie in the sky dream. She has an alternative thought, but that would require her to take a particular option for GCSE, but it means dropping something else she really likes.

For her Range and median would be helpful to give an idea as to whether she needs to take the option for GCSE that would give her a better chance in the second ambition.

Median is a useful benchmark - then you know if your child is near the middle, top half or bottom half. It's not really giving away information about other pupils, or telling kids that they came bottom.
When giving test results back to a class, I would usually tell them the median, the top mark and "not many people got below...". For a subject taught in sets, the latter gave pupils due warning that they were in the relegation zone when we came to reviewing the setting, and sometimes it was the impetus they needed.

My kids' comp give top mark and median.

My daughters' school (independent) used to give exam results plus the average (median) for the year group. The only other context we were given was the child's age compared to the average.

I never felt the need for anything else because the comments expanded on the marks. It was always clear whether or not a particular result was anything to be worried about, where any weaknesses lay, and what they needed to do about it.

The only useful measure is where your child is against themselves. So, flight paths (much as I hate them), or KS3 grades still based on GCSE criteria.

😭 nonononononononononooooo these are bobbins

I think you and I could have a lengthy and wide-ranging discussion about assessment!

However if a school is going to give a child a percentage, they have to give them something else too, like the class average (class average useful in maths as we set). On another thread a child got 22% in their maths exam which sounds extremely concerning until the parent got the additional information that the highest mark in that set was 38%. So a v difficult exam for that group puts a very different spin on things.

Last day of term? That’s rubbish. In both primary and secondary school, my kids reports have never been given out on the last day.

My daughter gets her end of year report on July 8th this year. They break up on 19th.

@PenceyPrep definitely ask them. In my experience independents can be very dodgy indeed about assessment. They aren't held as accountable as state schools and don't always have someone overseeing a 'system'. But the data you've been given really should have meaning for the teachers, or what was the point of doing it?

Why do you care what your child scored against other pupils?

Genuinely bemused

Argh. The assessment nerd in me is triggered by this thread. My MA is in education assessment.

1. Those parents who want to measure their children up against the rest of the class are doing very small scale norm referencing. It's weird and almost as meaningless as the random '75%' this school is giving out. All you're doing is boosting the egos of the top students because they can see the faces of those losers who are weaker than them. It's arbitrary Victorian rubbish. It gives you the measure of where your child is amongst their 30 peers, yes. But it tells you nothing, really, because if you want rankings then it's telling you nothing about where they stand outside the bubble of the arbitrary measures designed by their teachers.
2. Oh my god I'm just going to say 'A' and 'B' as other meaningless measures. It's not relevant to this thread but I've seen independent schools still randomly assigning letter grades for no apparent reason, unquestioned by either parents or children and based entirely on 'vibes'.
3. The only useful measure is where your child is against themselves. So, flight paths (much as I hate them), or KS3 grades still based on GCSE criteria.

OP I'm dying inside hearing about this nightmare.

Hmmm they give reports out on the last day of term deliberately so you don't have time to query! I'd get your email in now and see what they say. I don't think asking for a benchmark is unreasonable at all.

I’d wait for the end if year report now and if that’s as unhelpful, contact them for more info before the end of term.

My daughters school, for each test they do, gives the kids their score, percentage and also has a scale system that is supposed to align with GCSE grades if you keep achieving at the same rate. It seems to work well and was accurate for my sons GCSE grades. Have you not had any parents evenings to give you an idea of how she’s doing?