Year 7 end of year exams

Not necessarily, if the grammar is super selective. It could be that its impact on the intake of some of the comprehensives in the town is very small.

If there is a grammar school in the town, then the other schools will not really be comprehensive, more like secondary moderns

There will be a decent buffer! If needed kids can always sit the extra higher questions if needed ( have never known it be).

No ones pigeon holing anyone. They're assessing them appropriately.

“He had his maths one yesterday and he told me that it was easy, I said to him that either he either got given the wrong paper or he just thought he was correct on every answer.”

You said that to him?! Next time, I’d go with, “that’s great you feel confident, sounds like you’ve done well - when do you get it back?”

My kids school set in maths from the start of Y7 based on SATs. They have tests all through the year split into Foundation and Higher. There’s enough crossover. Kids move sets termly if needed though yearly more common. All the work is covered multiple times so there’s no issue with missed work - and a child moving up is moving because they’re able to catch up. It a lot of topics, Higher isn’t totally different maths - it’s the same maths concepts but harder questions.

Prior to 2016 there were segregated maths papers for ks1 sats (so for year 2 children).

Generally pretty much every child did the level 2 paper and then some did the level 3 paper.

Old papers are here

www.satspapers.org.uk/Page.aspx?TId=4

It changed in 2016 to the current papers which I believe every child does.

The KS2 sats also had segregated maths papers - so there used to be the normal ones that everyone sat and then a level 6 paper which was for the higher attainers.

www.satspapersguide.co.uk/level-6-sats-papers/

There are vast, vast differences between children in terms of their maths ability. At primary there is a focus on keeping the whole class together and using mixed ability teaching.

Many higher attaining children do get very very bored with this especially in year 2 and year 6 and the "higher" (level 3 and level 6 papers) were to make sure they weren't just being ignored and making no progress.

In theory the new ks1 and ks2 sats are harder so there is no need for this but in practice there's a lot of bored high attainers in year 6 these days still.

In the U.K. secondary is generally the point at which the balance between keeping the whole class together for essentially social and developmental reasons and academic progress tips and although some secondaries have mixed ability in year 7 (usually to help with the transition and also so you are not setting just off ks2 data) most will set after that.

This means that the lower attainers can get the support they need - drop a language etc in the hope they can progress well enough to pass maths and English which are really important.

The higher attainers need much much more challenge and are capable of much more. So top set maths will often do two or three GCSEs in maths - they'll do the normal one at the normal time but add in either stats gcse or further maths gcse both of which help with the transition up to a level.

They can do this in the time that that lower attainers need to get up to pass level at gcse because most higher attainers come into secondary capable of getting a gcse grade 4 or 5 already at foundation gcse because the foundation gcse topics (with a few exceptions) are what is taught in primary.

We spend 5 years basically re teaching the lower attainers the primary maths curriculum again in the hope that this time they will get it.

At my DDs' school there were overlaps between the sets, you could move up sets without having missed major chunks.
If you do contact the school do it in a 'please can you explain' way not a 'you are doing this wrong' way. They probably know what they are doing, though if it is causing a specific issue for your DS then do let them know and they can make sure their messaging to him is useful.

the segregated papers will have a lot of variation in difficulty as well, and much of it will be crossover. So if he does very well in the lower paper, then he'll probably be moved up a set. The topics are often not that different - he probably won't have missed out on actual learning - but the types of problems they solve are different, and they might work on more interesting variations for homework or for extensions or whatever, whereas in the lower sets, the questions might be much more straightforward. By the time you get to GCSE foundation and higher tiers, then yes, the content does start to diverge, but in Year 7, it probably doesn't. They'll be taught much the same thing, but just explore it in more depth or problem solving for the top sets.

I have taught children who get marks like 3 or 5 out of 80 on maths tests, and it's really demoralising for them, and they also don't get the chance to show what they know and what they have learned, as there isn't enough space to do several levels of each type of question. One big combined paper could be impractically long! So two tiered papers can do the same thing, but just giving a hint about which questions each child should try - there is still plenty of scope to show what they can do.

6 sets for 300 children doesn't sound right, that would be 50 children per class?

If he found it easy and gets a very good mark then that is excellent evidence to move him up a set. Surely that is the point of these assessments? There will definitely be overlap in the exams - if you DS gets 95% and someone in the group above gets 20% in the more tricky paper the school will be able to compare the results even if they are weighted differently.

They don't tell them what sets they are in my DD's school. The children just guess dependent on the work and peers in the class.

With regard to your son saying it was easy I would just wait and see what his results are. My DD's comprehensive only sets Maths and English in Year 8 but all schools are different.

In maths there is a vast range of attainment even by end of year 7.
As others have said it is demoralising to give lower ability students tests they can't easily access, whereas upper end students need a challenge at their level.

Parallel sets is usual in large comps. The numbering is probably for ease of identification. DD's comp used R1 R2 R3 and S1 S2 and S3, but 1 2 3 4 5 6 would not be unreasonable.

Exams end y7 seems a good idea to me. I get quite despondent by the amount of y11s mentioned on MN who 'don't know how' to revise.

I took exams at the end of year 7 30 years ago! Certainly not fresh.

It's extremely unlikely they have two completely different papers.

It is likely there is a lot of crossover content with some extension added or support included.

Email and ask, they won't mind.

Y7 end of year exams? What fresh madness is this??

My DS's school has set the year 7 students for nearly everything. He is top set and they are already doing maths that I did in year 9 - top set will take further maths and statistics GCSEs so they seem to be romping through the syllabus.
His friend has difficulties with maths (dyscalculia) and is the bottom set of 6. They are working at a much slower pace with a lot of repetition. It suits him very well, and has made him more confident about learning maths. He would not do well sitting the same exam as the top set, and it would knock his self esteem.

Also, the "expected" result at ks2 sats is 100.

In the transition matrices this gives an expected outcome at gcse of a 4.

(Ie the majority of children who got 100 in their sats get a 4 at gcse.)

He's only a bit above that with 103 so maybe a 5? But that is still the foundation paper (grades 1-5) whereas higher is grades 5-9

So if he makes average progress you would expect him to be doing the foundation paper.

Obviously he might work harder/you might get a tutor/he might develop an amazing ability at maths etc but that's the stats.

Varies by school.

At the school I worked at most recently the lower attaining students would get really demoralised if they did the paper that most others did, so we had a system of "foundation" which was easier questions plus the start of the main paper and then the "core" paper that was the main paper plus some harder questions in the end,

The actual maths gcse works the same way - there are "crossover" questions that are in both foundation and higher.

Yes that's basically what we do now but split over two papers into core and support.
All students have the same 30 marks, the support get 20 easier mrks, and the core get 20 harder marks, to make a total of 50 marks per paper. Then we do calc and non calc. It's the same just looks different.

It just doesn’t feel right to not have an all encompassing paper with varying levels of difficulty.

This doesn't happen at GCSE either, there's tiered papers.

I'd look at it this way, there's 70 marks on a test, we know the children in set 3-4 won't be able to answer the last 20 marks so we'll cut it off and not knock their confidence.
Likewise we know set 1 will answer the first 20 marks with ease so we'll leave those off for them to ensure they have time to attempt the challenge at the end.

Having worked in schools with both systems, I much prefer the tiers approach for children's confidence.