Is 74% a good result for a yr 8 mths exam ?

[ronnieandmrman]

Or is it quite poor? I detest maths so I would have been proud of myself but just wanted other opinions

( I'm very proud of my son either way I'm just seeking options)

Really? Even if he was set 50% of questions 4 years above his ability level. He's be gutted??

You'll have to ask the school

DS did two papers, the standard test (he thinks class average for top set was around 80%) and the extension test (class average was around 70% he thinks) oh and another paper I think I didn't ask him what average was.

(He's one of the annoying 100% children, he doesn't mean to be annoying he just loves maths, sorry!)

needs more context.

at dc school anything below 90% is a fail.

A good score is relative.

A 74% might be the highest score that a student got in the year. It might be the lowest and all others got 95% or higher.

But even if it was the lowest score by a huge margin, all that really matters is if your child did well for their ability level.

Has he been getting 90+% in his homework? Then he can look at why his test was lower than expected and work to consolidate gaps in knowledge.
Or is he hovering around 70% in classwork - if so then he's done well - and could perhaps look at the areas he finds harder.

That's the context you need for your child and either way, your boy can reflect upon the test, and discover his strengths and weaknesses and work on them accordingly.

If their pass rate is 90%, then their tests are too easy. They should be hard enough that only the exceptionally bright should be getting the top marks.

I'd expect 70+% of children to "fail" to get 90%.

I think there is a misunderstanding.

is the percentage the ratio of children between higher and lower achievers? then 74% is a good result.

but if the percentage is the percentage of correct answers in the test 74% is quite poor.

I think it's the maths teacher you need to ask. Or perhaps your child could tell you what other children scored.

My younger daughter generally gets 90%+ in her maths exams so it would be low for her. My elder daughter has SEN and getting over 70% in any exam would probably be the best result of her life. It's all relative isn't it.

@ronnieandmrman as others have said, it doesn’t say a lot unfortunately.

I wish marks had some meaning tbh. It would make it much easier fir both students and parents to know where they stand.
i ended up asking the dcs what level it is - so 5, 6, 9 etc… and then A, B, C when they were doing their A levels. But they might not do that yet in Y8.

Btw I disagree about the mark having a different meaning depending on the set they are.
At the end of the day, they’ll all do the same exam. If a child gets 50%, it’s 50% and associated with a level (let’s say) 5 regardless of whether they are in top or bottom set. It might mean they are doing really well/really poorly fir their set. It means little re the exam iyswim

@greenacrylicpaint do you mean 74% is quite poor for maths or in general?

Because I found grades boundaries vary A LOT from one subject to the next.

What they used to do when I was at school was tell you whereabouts you were in the class so as well as the actual mark, it would say 6/32 if you got the 6th highest mark out of 32 in the class.

I’m going to guess that 74% is pretty good going in the context of growing up in a home with little understanding of schooling or education.

So, very well done to him. You should be proud of him. Agree with others, do everything to hide your own dislike for the subject.

Disclaimer: I'm waiting for an appointment and clicking through 'active' - thought I would add something for some light relief!

My son is doing a Maths degree and the methods they have for determining overall score are mind boggling! There is a whole 2 sided paper (which no one except those studying Maths can understand) which lays out the formula. So - it's possible to 'score' 40 out of 50 but still be awarded an overall score of 70% rather than what you might expect 80% - depending on the various methods of scaling, how many took the paper, how hard the paper was....

So, nothing vaguely helpful to add, just throwing my perspective in!

It depends on too many factors.

Is it a test on last year's material plus this term?
Is it a test just on the recent topics?
Is it a test on the whole term of topics?
Is it a test where it would be expected that a lot of students could get 90+%? (Eg test on facts and material from class)
Is it a test where only a small number of students would be expecting to score highly? (Eg questions beyond the class work that tests mathematical thinking and logic)

If the test is material that they've studied in class and the aim is to check that students understand it, I'd say it's reasonable for most students to get between 70-100%.

If the test is a general assessment of maths content past and present and the aim is to gain a rank across the year group, I'd expect most students to be somewhere in the middle with outliers at the top and bottom end.

Totally off topic, but did the school not carry out any assessments in y7?
Ds is in y8, and as well as end of topic tests they have have end of year exams too.

As others have said, speak to the teacher, it's difficult to ascertain without much more to go on.

It doesn't matter what other children scored.

Whether they all scored 20-30 or all scored 90+, all that matters is whether each child is doing their best and meeting or exceeding heir own targets.

A score of 74% on a test doesn't indicate whether you've done well or not. Even the brightest student might have only got 80% because the test was particularly hard or set beyond their level.

And there’s another one…

If he has just had a set of exams over several subjects, are you going to get a report soon?
If so, that is probably your best bet of finding out how well he has done compared to how school think he should be performing.

Otherwise, it sounds like a great score unless the test was exceptionally easy.

This really makes no sense to me. In my day, if I took a maths test and there were a max of 50 marks awarded. If I scored 40, that gave me a grade of 80%. In my day (and I appreciate the boundaries have changed), that was considered an A and it was an absolute score. If I was in the top set for maths, that 80% might make me sort of average - low for my class vs some of my peers who were perhaps getting 90% or 100% but it was still me getting an extremely good pass.

Ditto, when DS brings his assessments home, he is given a score out of a total of usually 30-40 which is then converted to a percentage. Again, that is an absolute score - if DS gets 20/40 he has answered exactly 50% of the questions correctly.

That is how I saw it done at my school and it's how I receive grades for DS now so I really don't understand all this "grade boundaries" stuff in the context of percentages. OP's DS answered 74% of the questions correctly?

Does DS think he did well? That's often a good guide. As others have said, without any context for the test it's impossible to say whether it's intrinsically good or bad.

I'm also in the camp that says it's irrelevant what the class average is. Unless you also know whether your class is particularly strong at maths, particularly weak or somewhere in the middle. A slightly below average mark at a super selective grammar is still a very good mark. A slightly above average mark at a failing school might be a very bad one.

It depends on the questions and what he has or should have learned already.

If it is simple 1+1 = then every year 7 should be getting 100%.

If they are asking him to calculate imaginary numbers I would expect all of year 7 to get a 0%.

Then there is what is being marked, you could get multiple marks for the method but get the actual final answer wrong.

I’m going to guess that 74% is pretty good going in the context of growing up in a home with little understanding of schooling or education.

Wow…
Not even sure what to say about that.

But fir your information, my two dcs were raised in a school with little understanding. I had the same questions than the OP and struggled to make sense of it. Two dcs now at two very good Uni.

Fwiw, the reason for that is

• I’m not British, have been through the British/English system so had no pints of reference
• dh didn’t know either - he grew up in poverty with very little support education wise. Still went to Uni and became an engineer, despite the extremely poor advice he was given whilst at school (eg no need for maths at A level if you want to do engineering 😵‍💫😵‍💫)

One thing we both did though was to keep interested, ask questions and encourage the dcs throughout. Just like the OP is doing.

Making people feel crap about the fact they dint know how things work is shit tbh.

It matters in my DS school. They are set in maths and if you are in the bottom 10% or so in tests consistently, you will drop a set.

Why would it matter that your child was put in the correct set for their ability?

As someone who sometimes writes tests (although not in the Uk and not maths), there are two extremes in test scoring.
Either - you rank everyone’s scores and you aim to give a certain percentage of the students each type of grade. So in many old-fashioned systems, 50% would be the pass grade and literally 50% of the cohort would pass and 50% would fail.
Or - tests are entirely skill based. Either you show you can do the skill (eg. Solving a quadratic equation) or you can’t. If 100% of the cohort can do that skill, one hundred percent of the cohort pass that test. If 0% can, 0% pass.

The reality of test writing in 2023 (again, in my experience, not in maths, not in the Uk) is that you try to write a test that will give a spread of results. You include plenty of questions that work as kind of a pass/fail skill thing. So if you need the kids to prove they can solve quadratic equations, you put enough questions on that skill in the test, with high enough marks assigned, that it isn’t possible to get higher than the agreed pass mark without being able to do that skill. And then if all the marks come out higher or lower than you were expecting, you set the next test harder or easier so things balance out. And your expectations of the students depend on what is in the syllabus and what previous cohorts and other teachers classes get in the test or similar tests. It’s way less precise than you might think. The maths department’s two page mark calculating formula sounds quite nice in comparison.