Teachers! Why do schools do this?

[ButteredRadish]

School report. Year 5. SEN but at mainstream Primary. Report summary included wonderful, kind words full of praise and appreciation. Not a negative word to be said! Lovely. Brought a tear to my eye, actually. Then we get to the end of year ‘scoring’ section.

Maths: WTS = Working Towards the Age Related Expectation (So in other words “Your kid is behind….”)
Writing: WTS = Working Towards the Age Related Expectation
Reading: GDS = Working at a Higher Level within the Age Related Expectation for Reading

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not overly surprised that my child is behind in Maths & Writing but ‘ahead’ in reading. My child has SEN as I’ve said, so it’s somewhat to be expected. But do all schools use this ‘That kid’s behind, that one is ahead’ system?

I’m not actually complaining or being precious about them informing me my child is behind(!) I’m just shocked that they ‘score’ primary children on their report card. I mean, fair enough behind the scenes; Just seems a bit competitive to be issuing ‘scores’ on how clever your kid is. We’ve got all that fun & games to come with exams etc in high school.
Didn’t they stop the whole Top of the Class thing decades ago?! (I know it’s not quite the same!)

I can totally see some parents feeling like shit that their child didn’t get ‘GDS’ on all three. There’s already two mums not-so-subtly bragging about their year 2 DCs getting 3 x ‘GDS’, on the parents’ group and a playground mum I speak to whose DC is in that year, is heartbroken that her daughter got ‘WTS’ on all three. She wasn’t expecting it on any of them so the bragging is not helping her at all. Could they not include it a little more diplomatically within the Report Summary to avoid braggy mums, or is that asking too much?! Is this ‘scoring’ necessary for another reason?
Would be interested to hear from any teachers about why this is done? Thanks!

Eh? How else are you supposed to know how well your child is doing? You need an indication of how they’re getting on in their subjects wtf.

It’s standardised wording for school assessment

Most parents want to know.

so that they can put help in place so that their child does well.

It totally standard phrasing to throughout primary and even pre-school. I wouldn’t worry so much. As others have said, most parents want to know. If they are ahead great. If they’re not, speak to the teachers and ask why, and what can you do? You need that information to help your child. It’s not a competition. Why does anyone need to brag? Or even mention results? It might be that they’re not far from where they need to be. Not all children will be where they need to be. It sounds as if you’ve got a lovely report stating how lovely your child is. How would you have felt if you didn’t get any information on the academic progress?

It's basically wording that has replaced 'levels' and is no more than that. The idea was to get rid of grading but had just created a new kind. Teachers need to group children in order to set targets, create timetables for those groups to address gaps, and share with parents where they're at in relation to 'age related expectations.' Of course developmentally a year is a long time and it's a bit more fluid/rapid when they're younger.

There's nothing to gloat or be very sad about. It's where your child is at and doesn't necessarily mean they will always achieve better at that level as time goes on. Sometimes to higher levels, sometimes to lower. And between us, this assessment system isn't extremely consistent in all schools - some SLT are more lenient, some are harder. You also can't move a child back without properly justifying yourself/being prepared for pushback. This is annoying as you often get children who were pushed/nudged up grades and you think 'there's no way', or they've but no way to record accurately. I wish the education leads realised how fluid learning is and how stressful/inaccurate the system can be.

The most important thing is to be let yourself and your child know that they can improve/you believe in them/go places with /read with them and talk with them. Those are the most important thing you can do. They may need to pull their socks up a bit!

I quite clearly asked in my OP why this info can’t be stated in the summary wording and that I’m not criticising the fact that they tell us this at all! Obviously they need to bring it to our attention! It’s the whole “My kid’s ahead” “Mine’s behind” scoring aspect that I’m referring to!

Thank you, that makes sense. I shouldn’t have shown the report to DD because whilst I’m not at all surprised nor worried that she’s behind in two aspects, she just saw that written in a bolder font and burst into tears. Despite being all smiles when I read the summary to her. Sigh… The joys of ASD!

That’s the main reason I posted really, as I thought if they’d just not put that part there quite like that and instead, included it gently within the summary, she’d not have got upset and neither would the other mum in year 2, I don’t think.
Thanks again

I think you’ve misread the subtext of my OP and not really understood what I was getting at! I did quite clearly state, more than once that the issue was with the method not the info itself!

Still don’t get your point. What difference does it make where it’s stated? One way or another your child is “behind” in those aspects of his schooling. Only dick parents make a thing about it, and people like that will find a way to be competitive about bloody anything. The whole “working towards” language was brought in to soften the language for parents. My old primary school reports had actual grading.

Sorry for the awful grammar 🍷😂

Oh and my favourite Winnie the Pooh quote is something like: 'You have to admire someone who can spell Tuesday. And even if they can't, the are some days when spelling Tuesday doesn't matter.

There's more to life than maths and spelling.

PS: I recommend audio books. There's a free website called storynory where they can read and listen to all sorts with lovely voices. Basically all the texts that have run out of copyright - Alice in Wonderland etc.

I totally agree OP. They need to think harder as the way they report has real impact on wellbeing of kids (and parents!). My DC secondary school takes the year 6 sats and predicts what level they should be at for all subjects. What good a yr 6 maths sats result is at predicting how good they’ll be at year 9 drama I will never know! Then their report comes out green if they are on track to get their predicted grade, orange if behind and pink if very behind. It is utterly depressing getting a sheet of orange and pink for no reason at all other than stupid sats results. And we don’t get any nice comments (or any comments at all) to balance it out. It feels like schools only see kids as potential grades these days which is so sad.

Oh god that’s ridiculous! No wonder so many kids struggle with anxiety and low self esteem

@VioletandDillFab idea, thank you!

It’s not "competitive" or anything like 'top of the class". How your child 'scores' has nothing to do with how any other child 'scores'; it just shows you whether they are at the level expected nationally for their age.

Don't you want to know how well your child is doing academically? If not, you’re very unusual. If the school didn’t do this, and only wrote positive things for a child who tries hard but is still not up to the expected level for their age, some parents would get a huge shock at the end of Y6 when the statutory SATs results have to be reported to parents. The wording is standard objective fact. If some parents start bragging that’s unfortunate, but not the school's fault.

I know it wasn’t a AIBU question, but YAB completely U.

@ButteredRadishcould you suggest to the school that they separate the comments and the levels onto two separate bits of paper? That way in future you could share the comments page with her, without her seeing the levels?

I forgot to say, I think "working towards the age related expectation" is a pretty good and positive way of wording it. I'm very surprised it made your child cry. (Actually, I’m surprised that at that age she’s not already well aware that she doesn’t find some things as easy as some other children do. I’m afraid it’s just how life is. At every activity or hobby children soon realise that some are better at it than others.)

I think it’s disgusting. Our schools never did this. They would say what areas of a subject they were doing well in and what areas they needed more work. The school however had end of year exams from age 8. The results were given to kids and were in reports. It might say Geography 60% _ year average 65%. Etc etc for every subject. So parents could see how they were doing generally.

Gosh, the colour thing is ridiculous.

Ds' primary school did WT, OT and WA but he didn't see the report, and I only shared the positive bits.

I regarded any less positive bits as for my eyes and for me to deal with.

Wow you are so lucky. I hate vagueness, I want to know if my kid is behind so I can do something about it, what parents wouldn't??! I think it's nuts parents don't want clear information 😕

Honestly, I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill here. If the teachers had to weave the levels into the text of the report for each subject lots of parents would complain that the report was not clear enough (most will want to know how their child is doing and what they need to work on). The idiot parent showing off about their child’s scores would still find a way to show off even if they had to read the report to find out those scores (and is clearly the type of classless parent to show off regardless - if not about the academic scores it would be about how little Johnny is swimming with kids three years older or doing grade 8 on the bassoon - just ignore them!).

My kids’ school also grades them on attitude to learning, effort and behaviour and I always focus on and praise those grades more than the academic ones.

But aren’t reports a lot softer than they used to be? I think children need to be learn resilience rather than things soften even more.

What sort of arsehole posts their child’s attainment grades on the parents’ WhatsApp group? Particularly the GDS ones. Take that as a useful indicator of people you don’t want to mix with in future.
I think you are being a bit precious here. The language schools use for stating attainment has already been massively altered since the old days. Of course it needs to be in black and white in the report. If it wasn’t put there, then what’s the point of the report and you’d have loads of parents complaining that they hadn’t been informed properly. Also, reports aren’t just for the parents. They stand as a record or tracker if you like, of a child’s pathway through school. Otherwise you can get parents complaining in Year 6 that they’ve never been told their child is behind and now it’s too late.
Yes, this happens.

Its only competitive if you compete. Just ignore others talking about what their children got and try not to compare. Its important to know how your child is doing, especially the areas they're struggling in.

You'd find it worse in my country, they get number grades in all subjects from around 9/10 years old (depending on the school, some start number grades in 3rd grade, some in 4th) and end of primary school they do the top of the class thing and give them a monetary reward in front of everyone.

Exactly that. It’s lovely reading all the nice comments, but ultimately you want to convey clearly if the kid is above expectations (keep doing what you’re doing), at expectation (all fine but keep an eye on it), or below (need to take action). Ideally I would even prefer an actual numerical grade and a range, so I could tell if we’re borderline. Ignore the bragging idiots in any case, how the info is conveyed wouldn’t change this.

I’m not originally from the UK and I think the lack of testing and evaluating in England unhelpful. When they finally encounter an assessment they are completely stressed out. We were constantly being evaluated and so quite used to it. There was always another test if one went wrong, Our yearly grade was based on many small weekly assessments. For those that were consistently failing, action could be taken early.

The fact that you can get to the age of 16 here without having ever sat tests that count and then taking GCSEs that define your entire scholastic career is ridiculously stressful!