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.

[spanieleyes]

No, not everyone. You sit and wait for the email!
For year 6 teachers ( who thankfully only have writing moderation to get through) the email arrived on the last day of the SATS tests. That was a fun way to end the week!

[GoodStuffAnnie]

Yep the standards are too high! The working towards writing examples are bonkers.

[ohfook]

@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!

I wonder if this depends on local authority? I've never heard of anybody recording videos. Ours absolutely do expect each piece of evidence of the y2 objectives to be marked out with a post-it note so as not to waste the moderators time. It's ridiculously time consuming although I suppose if we knew at the start of the year you we're being moderated you could just do it in advance.
I do like the idea of a friendly conversation about a pupil between two professionals. It sounds much more supportive and much less like being checked up on.

[Year2teacher]

@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?

25% of year 2 teachers are moderated each year but even if they aren't this year they still have the mammoth job of marking all of the sats in their own time, moderating internally and filling in a mammoth spreadsheet with official grades, teacher assessed grades, raw scores and scaled scores. I'm sure it would be hugely appreciated.

[nopenotplaying]

@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.

I'm just a mum not a teacher. My Y2 has just completed them. I had no idea this happened behind the scenes. You have my every sympathy ❤️‍🩹 hopefully they will just scrap the testing altogether going forward x

[ohfook]

@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?

It's not all y2 teachers. They usually let you know after the sats. Generally if there's a new teacher in y2 that'll trigger a moderation otherwise on our authority it's on approx a 3/4 year cycle.

[itwillonlygetbetter]

What a load of tripe. I've been a teacher for about 25 years (but not the sats years) and had no idea this level of crap went on during moderation but am not the slightest bit surprised.

I agree with the poster who said it's all a game - filling in boxes to pass a 'test' - the children themselves get lost along the way.

I'm spending the half term writing reports, which is pretty miserable but what every teacher expects to do at this time of year and therefore factors it in - that's on top of planning lessons for next term, organising a school trip, writing ILPs and planning the meetings with parents etc etc etc all just 'normal' teacher stuff so how on earth are you supposed to find time to do anything extra such as have some sort of personal life??

That's why teachers are leaving in droves, folks!

[Sleepypoodle]

Another thing that has made me cross is that the moderators held an online briefing for the selected schools. In the briefing, the lead moderators (who aren't classroom teachers anymore) said that last year there were issues with evidence gathering due to sats but this year they don't expect any. The level of ignorance shown by this statement was massive. Our year2s missed most of their preschool year and had a massively disrupted reception (disruption to 50% of their education so far) so in the majority of cases did not arrive in Sep ready to start learning the y2 curriculum or with y2 social skills. Our school is totally broke due to the funding crisis so no money for extra staff running interventions as there was in previous years and all external services have been cut so diagnosis and support for send is nonexistent. We have a couple of weeks after half term before moderation where we have 4 more maths topics and some of the writing curriculum to teach. If we don't squeeze this in no child will get an age related judgement. I've have taught y2 for many years and was never in this position before covid.

Right, now I've got that rant out I'd better go and start working again.

[Year2teacher]

Thanks @nopenotplaying

That's one of the reasons I started this thread. I feel like this kind of crap has become normalised in schools and it's refreshing to hear responses from parents and those not in education.

[Year2teacher]

@Sleepypoodle

Another thing that has made me cross is that the moderators held an online briefing for the selected schools. In the briefing, the lead moderators (who aren't classroom teachers anymore) said that last year there were issues with evidence gathering due to sats but this year they don't expect any. The level of ignorance shown by this statement was massive. Our year2s missed most of their preschool year and had a massively disrupted reception (disruption to 50% of their education so far) so in the majority of cases did not arrive in Sep ready to start learning the y2 curriculum or with y2 social skills. Our school is totally broke due to the funding crisis so no money for extra staff running interventions as there was in previous years and all external services have been cut so diagnosis and support for send is nonexistent. We have a couple of weeks after half term before moderation where we have 4 more maths topics and some of the writing curriculum to teach. If we don't squeeze this in no child will get an age related judgement. I've have taught y2 for many years and was never in this position before covid.

Right, now I've got that rant out I'd better go and start working again.

Completely agree. The message at moderation training last year was that covid wasn't an excuse. The children were expected to achieve levels in line with previous years. I found that unbelievable to hear but sadly believable.

I hope your moderation goes well.

[Sleepypoodle]

@Year2teacher I have to make sure it goes well or I could end up as expensive experienced teacher forced out by slt as they can't really afford to pay me.

Thanks for starting the thread. It helps to get some of the anger out!

[Sleepypoodle]

@Year2teacher hope yours goes well too.

[Kiwano]

@clopper

I have experience of both Y2 and Y6 moderations. It is an absolute waste of everyone’s time. It ends up , especially with Y6, as very formulaic opportunities to write as trying to fit in semi-colons or particular tenses. I mean sats are just generally a waste of so much money. Teacher judgement was fine during covid, but not to be trusted now I guess. Just think how they could help schools with this extra money if they got rid of it all .It really is nit -picking bureaucracy at its finest.

This rings bells for me as a governor. I remember being quite shocked at being shown the process for Y6, because the result of that insistence on showing examples of the use of punctuation and tenses was invariably a dull, lumpy, artificial piece of writing that was actually the very reverse of what good writing should be. I remember in particular the insistence that each child should use an exclamation mark at least once in the text, but only in the way the DfE then deemed appropriate; so suddenly you would get these random sentences being shoehorned in saying something like "What fun!" or "What a surprise!" which made it sound ridiculously like Enid Blyton.

[Year2teacher]

It's like that with Year 2 as well. The children have to include words with specific suffixes such as -ment, -less and -ful. Kills creativity.

[KingscoteStaff]

Yr 6 teacher here who got the news we were being moderated on the last day of SATs. Nice.

We had an online training session in November, which was full of ‘no extra work should be needed’ and ‘we’re not looking for tick lists or books bristling with post it notes’.

We went to the final briefing last Wednesday, when one of the Borough’s teachers who was moderated last year was asked to speak about her experience. What had helped her, she was asked. Apparently, the moderators had really appreciated all her dated tick lists and the post it notes she’d used to indicate where standards had been met. Cue stunned silence from assembled Year 6 teachers.

Currently sitting with 90 books on my kitchen table and a LOT of post it notes…

[noblegiraffe]

What are these Y2 results used for that justifies such ridiculous workload?

[KingscoteStaff]

@Kiwano And those exclamations wouldn’t have been good enough. They needed to be ‘What fun this is!’ Or ‘How excited they had been!’.

Famous Five all the way…

[Kiwano]

@KingscoteStaff, how depressing that they are still insisting on the use of exclamation marks in that way. I hoped that by now someone would have noticed that no-one writes that way in RL.

[IamChipmunk]

@Year2teacher thanks for clarifying.
I also didn't realise that they were all internally marked?! I presumed they would be sent away and externally marked.
We have just done something similar with the new BTEC PSAs so completely understand the workload.
Will send something in after half term!

[Qilin]

@nopenotplaying

Is this not the last year of Y2 sats?

Apparently, though they've changed the end year before so who knows.
They will still exist and will be come 'optional but advised' apparently. So then it will depend on the type of SLT you have.

[Iamnotthe1]

In my experience, it's the anticipation of what you think moderation is going to be like that drives the workload, not the moderation itself.

I was moderated at Y6 last year: I spent hours and hours pouring over pieces, debating judgements, ranking children and then ranking each piece for each child, checking Y3/4 and Y5/6 spelling lists, etc. In the end, that level of prep just wasn't needed. The moderator just needed to satisfy herself that I knew the standards well enough and could talk about how each of the selected children had met them. It ended up being quite an enjoyable session, sharing the kids' writing and the journeys they'd been on since the start of the year. It was a really positive experience and absolutely not what I'd built it up in my head to be.

I think, like with many things in teaching, the idea of something ends up becoming much bigger and more hyperbolic than the reality.

[Iamnotthe1]

@Qilin

Apparently, though they've changed the end year before so who knows.
They will still exist and will be come 'optional but advised' apparently. So then it will depend on the type of SLT you have.

It will depend whether Y2 remains an official data collection point for the children. If it doesn't, SATs and moderation have no purpose and Y2 becomes like the other years in schools (except Reception and Y6).

[Year2teacher]

@Iamnotthe1

In my experience, it's the anticipation of what you think moderation is going to be like that drives the workload, not the moderation itself.

I was moderated at Y6 last year: I spent hours and hours pouring over pieces, debating judgements, ranking children and then ranking each piece for each child, checking Y3/4 and Y5/6 spelling lists, etc. In the end, that level of prep just wasn't needed. The moderator just needed to satisfy herself that I knew the standards well enough and could talk about how each of the selected children had met them. It ended up being quite an enjoyable session, sharing the kids' writing and the journeys they'd been on since the start of the year. It was a really positive experience and absolutely not what I'd built it up in my head to be.

I think, like with many things in teaching, the idea of something ends up becoming much bigger and more hyperbolic than the reality.

I'm glad to hear you had a really positive experience.

Sadly I've been moderated 5 times before and each time the experience has been very different, ranging from hugely positive to absolutely horrific. I think it's so dependant on the moderator. That's what's causing me the most worry.

[eatdrinkandbemerry]

Well I wish my child's year two teacher had been moderated then it would have been noted that my child was nowhere near the levels she had been placed at !
Just maybe my child would have got the intervention needed before it caused severe mental health problems and self harming!!!
Not all schools and teachers are honest 🤷‍♀️

[Iamnotthe1]

@Year2teacher

I'm glad to hear you had a really positive experience.

Sadly I've been moderated 5 times before and each time the experience has been very different, ranging from hugely positive to absolutely horrific. I think it's so dependant on the moderator. That's what's causing me the most worry.

In that case, I'd say to you that, if a lot is dependant on the individual moderator, that's the one variable that you can't control. No amount of time, energy and stress that go into preparing now is going to affect that and, as such, it won't alleviate your worry. If you think something will make you feel better, do it. But if you don't then any energy spent on it may only leave you feeling worse.

My moderator was the lead one for KS2 in the LA so I'm using my experience with her as the benchmark for how things should be done. If there is so much variation by LA and by moderator then there really needs to be something done about that.