to think all this worrying over National Curriculum levels is ridiculous?

[loopyloops]

OK, I understand everyone wants their DCs to do well blah blah blah, and I'm not trying to offend anyone who is genuinely concerned, but- who cares? Teachers often make them up. Yes that's right, some unscrupulous teachers look at what they were last term, look at where they should be next term, and pick a number somewhere in between (believe me, I am a teacher, although obviously I haven't done this myself, I know plenty who will admit to it).
Levels are not real. They don't indicate how bright your kids are or how hard they have worked. They measure things that can't be measured, and are totally skewed to measure certain things and miss out others.
If you are worried about your child's achievement, discuss it with the teacher. Even better, get involved with your child's work. But relying on gleaming any kind of information from a number plucked out of thin air is simply silly.

I think they're good as a guide, but as with all guides some people take them a tad too literally sometimes (I think is a nice way of putting it ).

I'm not that bothered by them, but it would be a good indicator if the DD suddenly went well below average in something she was previously OK at, I'd perhaps then look at why that was happening to see if she was alright rather because I was worried about her school work.

well, i don't know ANY of my old teaching colleagues who made any of this up! in fact we would go to great lengths to annotate kids work and keep scrupulous records, so that we would be able to show parents at parents evening exactly why little Fred was a level 4 not 5, or how they could progress to the next level etc etc etc

they appear to be similarly thorough at the school my own children go to.

but i do agree too many people think these numbers are the be all and end all, they want to know what number their kid is at not what they need to do to help the kid progress - just like some are in a mad rush to get their kids up all the levels on the ORT asap

YANBU loopyloops, although I do think levels should be a useful indicator, they are not always. The 'making up levels' does happen it my school.

"Well he was a 3b last year and I'm sure he's got better so he must be about a 4c by now"

Ok, so maybe it's not quite so crude as that, but neither are they the stone-solid levels with mounds of annotated evidence that many other schools seem to have.

I'm fairly new to APP and still really getting to grips with it, but I don't think it's being implemented particularly well where I work, and because of this there are a lot of stressed teachers and parents, where x child hasn't made 2 sublevels this year. However, if you look at x's book you can clearly see that she has been structuring her work much more effectively, using paragraphs, improved her punctuation etc etc.

Wouldn't be able to make them up at our school either - we frequently have moderation meetings to check levelling judgements, the LEA moderate Y2 and Reception judgements, and this year we cross-moderated Y6 teacher assessments with another primary school because we boycotted SATs. So, nowhere to hide...

I'm a teacher of college age kids with learning difficulties and disabilities. At their levels (Entry 1, 2, & 3) there is a clear-cut, distinct line between each level.

If the NC levels were like this it wouldn't be too bad, but to me it seems totally up to an individual's perception.

Dd is in yr 3 and I couldn't be less bothered about the level her teacher (an ineffectual wimp with the personality of a house brick) perceives her to be.

I know that she can write a good story, spell most words correctly and can count, multiply, divide, etc. and that's good enough for me until she starts working towards exams that actually mean something.