Angry Year 2 teacher

[Year2teacher]

I am a long time contributor to these boards, particularly the Education and staffroom boards. However, I have name changed as this post would be outing.

I am posting to highlight the absolutely ridiculous situation Year 2 teachers across the country find themselves in each year.

I am currently preparing for Moderation during the first week after half term. During that time I will have a moderator come into my school and look at my judgements in writing, reading and writing by selecting a random group of children.

These judgements are drawn from not only doing the SAT papers but from my entire year of teaching. Every single lesson I teach this year.

I need to have evidence that each child in my class has achieved every single objective in writing, reading and maths. Not from the National Curriculum however, but the assessment framework, which is different...

I have to assess to see if they are Working towards, Expected or Greater depth to check they have evidence in their work for every single objective. The objectives for each level are different so I need to make sure I have provided enough opportunities for children to achieve greater depth, make sure those working at working towards have evidence for those objectives etc.

If a child was away or achieved an objective through adult support, it is not good enough. I need to provide opportunities for them to do that work independently.

If I marked their work and made changes it cannot be classed as independent and can't be used as evidence.

Finding evidence, planning for and teaching gaps in evidence and worrying at it all has taken hours and hours of my time.

The moderator will arrive and choose children randomly. They may choose a child who was off for three months. They may agree with my judgements (been teaching Year 2 for 15 years) or they may not.

I won't know until the morning so need to provide all evidence for all children.

I need to provide my results before they arrive so that can check I don't change them after they've been. In case I try and cheat...

This is on top of my normal crazy job in a term in which I'm also writing reports.

And why? I could grade every child in my class without needing to provide all of this evidence because I'm experienced and know my children.

Why do they government insist on proving they don't trust Year 2 teachers and making us jump through these ridiculous hoops?

I'm increasingly annoyed about this complete waste of time that takes me away from my class doing meaningless and pointless admin.

If you know year 2 teacher who is being moderated. Buy them chocolate.

[Rainallnight]

This is mad. What on Earth is it for? Who’s moderating you? Is it something to do with SATS?

[pumpkintart]

Seem insane as a parent I would be more concerned that a year 2 teacher should know which child doesn't have a stable friendship group, who doesn't always get breakfast in a morning, who always looks exhausted rather than which child cannot form a sentence correctly!

Utter insanity if all teachers refused to do the additional work outside the classroom it would show if the work load was unreasonable.

If a teacher is contracted to do 40 hours a week then that is what they should be doing.

[Year2teacher]

@Rainallnight

This is mad. What on Earth is it for? Who’s moderating you? Is it something to do with SATS?

Yes it's to do with sats.

It's supposed to be better than just using the sat papers for evidence (like in y6 apart from writing). We have to make teacher assessments but have to prove our assessments in a procession of stupid box filling exercises. Oh and we still have to do and mark the sats as well.

By the way, the scaled scores to see which children have achieved the expected levels on the papers are released on 1 June in the middle of half term...

[Amdecre]

Also anger-inducing, the level of moderation differs from county to county. I moved schools and at the same time moved county. Y6 moderation was far less strict in one area than another. And as a pp has said, it's all rubbish anyway. You can literally write something that doesn't make sense but as long as you've used the passive voice, a semi-colon and enough complex sentences etc you can technically get Expected at Y6...

[MHandwork]

What a huge waste of time. Just had a quick look at a training video for moderators. Challenge when experienced teacher has given a level partly with knowledge of child bring ill so the best piece is better reflection of the child. Dissection of a piece - have they used adverbials? Enough? What about adjectives - can be looked at again. All with a patronising talking head about how well the teacher understands the process.

Moderator already been through complex process to qualify as a moderator with no leeway, presumably face discipline if they use common sense.

What would happen if you didn’t do it - are on holiday with your family and don’t have time so work is second fiddle.

[Whapples]

@pumpkintart

Do you not do 40% of the report and the other teacher complete the other 60%

Usually it would work that way but due to extenuating circumstances atm, I am doing them all instead. I get paid an extra day but it’s feeling a tad overwhelming currently still!

[nopenotplaying]

Is this not the last year of Y2 sats?

[Year2teacher]

That's what they've said. But I've heard that before. They haven't said what they will be replaced with. That may be worse. It also doesn't help me with the workload now.

[chocolateisavegetable]

🍫

[Neolara]

What a completely ridiculous waste of time. I'd buy you chocolate OP.

[clopper]

2reefs
I feel pretty sure that much of the stress in this part of the system is caused by the God-complexed moderators. 

agree. A certain type of person is often drawn to this. Same in my school, the person with a poor work/life balance. A perfectionist. Someone looking for salt promotion. I’m not saying it’s all of them, but I have seen a few over the years. It was almost easier having a written sats paper years ago which just got sent off and marked.

[Year2teacher]

I think moderators should bring their own books of children in their own classes to compare. Useful

[clopper]

Year2teacher
agree with this
I think moderators should bring their own books of children in their own classes to compare

but they should give you a list and you get to pick a random 5 the day before.

[Zarataralara]

And the government wonders why there’s a teacher shortage.
And teachers are leaving in droves due to stress, burn out and sheer exhaustion.
Were standard really dire when teachers were trusted to know their pupils and teach accordingly?

[spanieleyes]

Our authority " suggest" that videos are used as part of the evidence to record reading fluency, a suggestion that has now become pretty much an expectation. So our poor year 2 teachers are recording reading sessions of every child in the year group just in case the child is one of the " chosen ones"

[Year2teacher]

Yep. And the exemplification video of a greater depth reader is completely unachievable.

[LucyLastik]

Also, ime year 2 teachers still have the relentless workload of their colleagues with this stuff on top. No extra time or pay. Took me an hour per child to evidence check their first maths books against the TAF. For me, that's 27 hours on top of the ridiculous workload already. Some of my GD children have 4 or 5 maths books. All of my class are on their third English book and that's without recording reading evidence using running records or videos. I feel you.

[Pinkflipflop85]

I genuinely don't understand all of the extra prep and stress. Are your slt putting additional pressure on you?

We're being moderated next week. No extra work has been done. We will just grab the books of the children they ask for and discuss them on the day.

Interestingly, at our recent moderation training/meeting we were told that they absolutely don't want to see any videos of reading!

[TeenDivided]

All this sounds such a waste of time.

I used to work in 'process improvement' and one of the parts of that was procedures to do stuff and making sure stuff met the standard.

The whole focus was making sure work we asked the engineers to do was cost/time effective, and that anything we were doing just for 'proof' was quick and easy.

Interestingly I did spend quite a bit of time arguing with 'management' that their 'bells and whistles' suggestions or their over interpretation of standards were unnecessary.

I wouldn't be surprised if this has happened with y2 moderation. A perfectly reasonable view of some cross checking to ensure common standards has been over engineered so much it is now a ridiculously complex time wasting no value added exercise.

[Year2teacher]

So how do you ensure every child has covered and has evidence for every objective?

I'd love to be able to just grab a book.

We've had to shove our entire years maths curriculum into 9 months to make sure we'd even taught all of the objectives.

This appears to be one of the problems. Such different advice from training.

We were told that each objective needed to have 3 or 4 examples.

[TeenDivided]

@Pinkflipflop85

I genuinely don't understand all of the extra prep and stress. Are your slt putting additional pressure on you?

We're being moderated next week. No extra work has been done. We will just grab the books of the children they ask for and discuss them on the day.

Interestingly, at our recent moderation training/meeting we were told that they absolutely don't want to see any videos of reading!

Now that approach seems more realistic and probably was was originally envisaged.

[Newnamefor23]

Y daughter is going through the same thing. Y6.

They thought they’d escaped external moderation but the notification came through at the last moment.

She’s not had a half term.

[onefinemess]

And that's why nobody wants to be a teacher.

Why on earth do you still work there?

There's so many opportunities out there.

[IamChipmunk]

Im a teacher, although secondary but have dc in year 2. I was aware of the SATs but not moderation of it all.
Is it all year 2 teachers?
I would like to send a treat and note of support if it is?

[GoodStuffAnnie]

I’ll tell you what else is ridiculous!!

(I am a y2 teacher being moderated next week)

my daughter (y10) showed me a piece of her English work last week. It was outstanding - a level 9. But no!! She didn’t have ALL her capital letters and full stops so technically it’s a Y1 piece of work. How’s that for joined up thinking?!