To think DD's school report is meaningless?

[Twowrongsdontmakearight]

Got DD's 'dashboard' for the end of term. Rather than levels the school are using A (above expected progress) E (expected progress) and B (below). DD has entirely Es.

So, she is progressing as expected. But from that we can't tell which subjects she's good at - "she's brilliant at this subject and is doing really well which is just what we expected" OR "well she really struggles but is trying hard and making slow progress as is expected".

AIBU to think this is a bit lazy on the part of the school and is a pointless exercise as it tell us nothing?

I am a teacher and a parent. The new system has been rushed in with no proper thought, as usual.

This is particularly a problem for the least able who may be years and years behind expectations for their age-group, as Alfie says. There is also a problem with the exceptionally bright, particularly in maths, who shouldn't be allowed to progress beyond "mastery" for their year-group, but clearly some can just do stuff way beyond that level.

Each piece of work he does is graded using the GCSE numbering.

This is such utter bullshit. Not only is grading individual pieces of work nonsensical, not only has that sort of level of detail about the new GCSE grades been released or even decided, but we won't even know what sort of work will get any sort of GCSE grade until 2017, when the first sets of grade boundaries for maths and English are released, and 2018 for the rest.

He came in from KS2 with high level 5s so is supposed to get 7/8s in the new-style GCSEs.

At least at the moment schools have KS2 levels so can use their experience to make those sorts of predictions. God knows what will happen next year when whatever it is they are replacing them with takes over.

mudandmayhem, the additional problem is that the government have raised expectations for all children, so what was expected in say Y3, is now expected in Y2.

Plus the pressure on primary schools to get Y6 children achieving the old level 5 or even 6 can mean that they look like they have gone backwards on starting secondary school.

Thanks bigtilleymint, I just think teachers professional opinion counts for nothing now. My Y5 appears to have made no progress, despite me observing big improvements especially in maths.

There is also a problem with the exceptionally bright, particularly in maths, who shouldn't be allowed to progress beyond "mastery" for their year-group, but clearly some can just do stuff way beyond that level.

What do you mean by "Should not be allowed to progress". If a student is truly bright, the school will willfully stop them from progressing too much?

He came in from KS2 with high level 5s so is supposed to get 7/8s in the new-style GCSEs.

At least at the moment schools have KS2 levels so can use their experience to make those sorts of predictions. God knows what will happen next year when whatever it is they are replacing them with takes over.

Yes I agree. If we hadn't had levels at primary school I wouldn't have a clue what was going one now! I don't know why the government changed them, just seemed like change for change's sake. Parents had got used to them, we knew what they meant. They could have changed it for reception years but left them in place for the existing pupils.

There are two conflicting issues here. In primary, levels have been scrapped and apparently they now have this age related expectations thing.

In secondary, levels have been scrapped and they have nothing. Schools have to do their own thing. In addition we have new GCSEs coming in that no one yet understands fully as they haven't been sat or even taught in many cases yet. So you have many secondaries trying to replace levels with GCSE grades but no one yet knows what the GCSE grades will look like. Some schools are using FFT generated grades as targets, but these are even worse than the usual computer generated stuff. So a kid who is exceeding (age-related) expectations in primary could instantly be below expectations in secondary if the teacher doesn't think they are the top 3% in the country so won't meet their '9' target.

Ofa, the government have said that schools should not move children onto topics/skills, etc for the year group above, but should concentrate on mastery of the skills for their own year group. This is fine for the vast majority of average/a bit above average children, but there are some exceptionally bright mathematicians particularly who I think will feel like they are just marking time.

One of my children struggles a bit at school. I expect a fair bit of her report to say below the expected level.
Previously with the levels I could see exactly where she was and know that she was gradually closing the gap. Now I'm going to have no idea if the gap has closed at all, got bigger or stayed the same. For me as a parent this new system is completely useless. I'm going to have to make an appointment with her teacher just to actually get a vague idea about how she is doing at school.

Dd is y6 and previously her report, which was two a4 sheets, had a little box on each subject with a few (probably generic) lines about stuff she's done throughout the year, with numbers 1 to 4 andy his was explained that these indicated how they were doing in regards to what's expected for their age. The teacher would give levels if you asked.

Dd has 1s in most subjects and was upset that her last report had her at a four for English, her strongest subject, with the pressure they have on them for sats she really worried about being below what was expected for her age, esp after being consistently above throughout the rest of school years, mentioned to teacher in parents evening, teacher wonder why I had concerns as he said dd is working at levels for a 14 year old, when I asked why is that rated as a below because it sounds good and turns out that it's now based on what is expected for the individual child's usual progress. They expected dd to be working at a 16 year old level based on her progress, and because she isn't, she's got the lower score.

Would have been really helpful to let at least the dc know this, because it's caused a lot if confusion, some children have gotten number ones in subjects that they need help with and if the parents hadn't realised the new system, they'd think they didn't need the help/support as the dc are working above their age related targets, and other parents have worried why their dc have suddenly dropped to below.

All I want to know is that dd manages the work that is set in class, because if she struggles I'd like to help, I found both systems confusing but the latter one more so as they switched without telling parents or dc.

bigTillyMint - the English curriculum for maths moves rapidly over topics and introduces new concepts quickly to pupils, albeit with little depth.

The French curriculum for maths spends a great deal more time on mastery and depth before introducing new concepts. You can make problem solving with the four operations very challenging indeed.

Both my DSSs are gifted mathematicians who did the maximum maths available in the French school system before moving to England to read Economics at university. Their preparation in maths was excellent compared to their British A-level educated peers.

I think that more depth and less speed when acquiring the building blocks of maths has a lot to be said for it.

Well that's good to hear Bobo!

Thank you to everyone for your comments. I didn't realise this was a national thing so I now won't be challenging the school about it!

I knew that the old levels were changing and DDs school told us last year that they had introduced a new system where DC started at level 1 in year 7 and progressed from there. It now looks like this has gone. Will need to find out at parents evening!

If it's secondary school then it's not a national thing and please do complain. Complain to the school that the data they are providing is useless and complain to your MP (especially if Tory) about the utter mess they've created with poorly-thought through policy.

bigTillyMint wow, that's quite bad! Are the bright pupils supposed to be bored in class waiting for the other to catch up? So sad.

I remember my math teachers in middle and high school giving us the usual curriculum, and if we were in advance, or bored, they would start with higher level maths. One of them was giving lessons on classe preparatoire mathematics (I think he did it because he was as bored as half of the class, and we were a class of rambunctious nerds. Better keep us occupied).

Fuck, DD got all Bs in her report. I thought this meant along the traditional lines of A B C and therefore she might be doing OK, but it could be worse than I thought if B means Below expectations!

I think / hope schools have their own systems though...

DD had level 6`s in primary so expects levels 8 in high school.- presume A* - Lower for new subjects like French - predict level 5 (but who knows) She may not even take that at GSCE.
So she can only get predicted or below expected. She can not be higher.

At risk of going against the tide, the old system wasn't all that great either. For example, if a DC gets level 6 maths and english in y6, this gets extrapolated across all the subjects in secondary, with a prediction of a full set of A* grades. So every time the DC gets less than top marks, they are scored as underachieving.

It doesn't make sense to assume you must be amazing at, say, Geography or RE, just because you are good at English. And it's not very motivating. Also, there is a high risk of getting a sixth form place based on predicted grades and then not achieving it :(

Grumpy, that will still happen, that hasn't changed! GCSE targets will still be generated from core subject performance at KS2.

Computer generated targets should never be used as predicted grades for sixth form entry though, those should be set by teachers.

The government removed the national curriculum levels and have not replaced them with anything. In my school at expected level meant you were on track to meet the national expectations in that subject area. It's all a bit ad hoc at the moment whole schools try to invent something to replace levels 1 through 8.

My school has moved on to GCSE grades. The reality is that we are still using the old grade descriptors as there is no other guidance on how to measure attainment. The conversion works out with more sub levels at the previous level 6 zone, which works for me as there was often gaps in the range between 6- to 7- that were hard to judge. The decimals are also useful for that all important number crunching.

My subject also suffers from the problem of progress and targets being measured from SATs in another subject. Teaching across the faculty of foundation subjects, it's clear that students don't make equal progress in these subjects as the skills and interest level of the content varies, but we have to keep identical goal posts. It is also ridiculous that the GCSE target is basically saying that because you got level X in English when you were 11, you should get grade Y in subject Z five years later.

Anyway time for me to enjoy some holidays before I look at my bag of marking...

I got what I thought was a helpful letter from school- I'll see if I can find it.

Here. Hope it's readable.

My subject also suffers from the problem of progress and targets being measured from SATs in another subject

All subjects suffer from this. Ridiculously, targets for maths are based on performance in maths and English at KS2.