To be a bit confused by dd's term 2 school report...?

[Sugarbeach]

Just got year 3 dd's school report today.....at first reading she is doing well and it is generally glowing. The reporting format has a comments section and a national curriculum level indicator on each subject and an overall comment by the teacher. Even though the teacher states that she is continuing to do well, and making great progress, when I compare the levels of maths, reading, writing and science to last term, they are the same (except for writing when progressed up one sub level)...So. Am a bit confused....How can she be making great progress and remain on the same levels? Not sure what to make of this and was wondering what the wise ladies of MN think.

As part of the regular parents/teacher meetings, I will be meeting the teacher to discuss next week, but thought I'd pick your brains.

The ?average? child makes 1.5 sublevels of progress in a school year. Which averages out at less than a sublevel when measured over a term (especially considering that this term is so short).
So she could well have made loads of progress without any change in NC level.

You can only go up to the next sub level once you've satisfied quite a few criteria, so she may have satisfied 65% and be progressing well, but not quite enough to be classed as the next level up. Also, they may simply not have covered some areas within that level yet, e.g. Money in maths so can't go up until it's all been covered and assessed.

Thanks for your thoughts ladies.

But it still means that she has to have some sort of a step change by the end of the next term ( one or 2 sub levels) which i don't see that she will be on track for as she has plateaued off in the last 2 terms, and suggests to me that this might be an early sign that she might be coasting or not progressing in line with her ability. This doesn't mean she's not doing well, so i envisage it is plausible that at the end of next term she might still have a good report and good ( for her year group) levels, but not be progressing through her levels....I think that is my concern, iykwim but hope this doesn't happen.

What makes you think she's plateaued off? Regardless of her level do you think she is better at reading, writing, maths than she was at the start of the year?

Remember that children are not robots and tend to learn in fits and starts rather than a more linear fashion. She may be going through a process of consolidating knowledge before progressing.

DS's writing level didn't change at all in Y3, but so far this year it's already gone up 3 sub-levels.

Good to know that they progress in spurts, so will bear that in mind.

She's progressed, certainly, but not being a teacher I do not know how much progress they are expected to make over a time period or what a sublevel of progression means.

She's reading pretty much the same sort of books as the beginning of the year, partly because she sticks to the same series/authors and unsure what else to venture into. Writing's improved, but I wouldn't say massively, but my expectations might be unrealistic. Maths - yep, she's being taught more stuff and seems to be grasping it, how secure it all is though I'm not too sure, I'll have to look into it more....I'm not even sure what exactly they mean by "problem solving" but will ask the teacher.....if it is algebra sort of thing we could do something at home.

One area of problem solving is word problems- working out what the calculation is that they need to do and then solving it.