school reports and 'exceeding expectations' ...or not

[flownthecoopkiwi]

so, got my DD report, she's in year 3. They can either not meet, meet or exceed expectations. She's doing well apparently, doing harder than year 3 maths work but not 'exceeding expectations'. Her report only had high level subjects like maths, english etc.
I have friends whose reports for the same year broke this down into small topics for each subject, and then judged progress against all of them.
Do standards of what exceeds expectations differ between schools? Is my DD doing ok or not brilliantly because she's not exceeding????

Give me a good old fashioned A or B or C any day!

These are meaningless phrases unless you know what the expectations are. You could achieve a B and meet expectations if you were expected to get a B or working below expectations if you were expected to get an A. Much prefer absolutes to these vague concepts

Each school defines these terms for themselves, they have no general meaning, you cannot compare one school with another. In my school children are graded when they start, and then get "exceeding", "reaching" or "not reaching", according to the grade predicted when they started, so a child could have "not reaching expectations" and be a very long way ahead of a child who gets "exceeding" - although most children in my school get "exceeding"

Yes what are the expectations?!!

DS is secure or mastery in all areas. Has excellent in effort and behaviour. But where is the descriptors and benchmarks or baselines.

He's happy, I know he's clever.

I like the part of the report when they say things like he's a lovely well mannered boy, an asset, popular and all that.

I don't think that's supposed to be how it works .

There's grades for each year so exceeding is exceeding that standard and not meeting is not meeting it.

There progress however is relative.

Interesting thread. My dd1, year 3, & dd2, y1, have always exceeded in every subject. (Not smug just interested, for it doesn't make any diff age 8 &6) I always assumed everyone exceeded, but couldn't exactly ask in real life.

If you Google "year x expectarions" you should get some idsa of what school was workin g with.

I saw the year 3 grid and the teacher had to have evidence for each point in the grid to make each of the grades.

Tbh I was gobsmacked to get a report with grades on it for reception. All I need is a word from the teacher if my DS is really struggling with something, I don't need my 5year old graded. Save that crap for secondary school! Given the above variations on what is. Actually being measured it's pretty pointless

It's certainly unusual to be exceeding in all areas in our school.

I think another thread had stats at about 1% for reception exceeding all areas.

There's probably some variables between schools. We need a primary teacher on!!

Max I agree xompletely. Psychologically it can affect how people view the child which in turn can effect expectations on them and how they perform.

I think it's awful infant school parents go away thinking their child is behind when really they may just grasp reading next year, well within normal bounds!

Also it sheds some light on why so many teachers are leaving teaching. Imagine trying to push small children through all these hoops or be criticized because your kids aren't making expected progress :(

I must be the only person who doesnt care about these reports. My DC aren't doing great at all but they are trying their best, enjoy school, have a wide variety of friends and are generally well behaved. At this age that's all I ask of them really. I'm sure I was still printing pictures with sponges at this age and grubbing about in the school garden now they have so much pressure piled on them.

All the ones who got exceeding may plateau or drop down and the others may just 'click' and get exceeding next year.

All my mum friends were breathlessly ripping open the envelopes right in front of their kids and either screeched for joy or were obviously disappointed. Sad for the littlies to see that.

My daughter in Yr 3 didn't get any exceeding expectations on her report and I was a little disappointed/surprised as she seems v good at reading and spelling to me. But as you say, I don't know what the expectations are or whether you need to be like one of those child geniuses to get exceeding from her teacher! I know i should be happy as satisfied that she is at the right level for her age though. Good to hear from the teachers on here. Thanks for the post!

I'm sure my 8 year old self wouldn't have exceeded as I wouldn't have learnt about fronted adverbials and being drilled in exactly how to pass sats. I wa smakin g papier cache volcanos and writing what I got up to at the weekend.

Still managed to get to Cambridge .

Its honestly ridiculous the pressure were putting on everyone children, teachers parents :(

My son came home with his year one report as working at greater depth in all but sport, RE and music. But actually what does it all mean? I know he's doing ok. I wish we had A, B, C grades

I think it varies between schools. It seems different between our infants and juniors for a start.

My favourite word from DS's reception report last year was "curious". If he's curious, he will learn.

He's beginning to click with reading now he's 6.5. He finds writing difficult to the extent that he's had an initial screening for dyslexia which shows potential tendencies, but have hit the barrier of his age.

General "expectations" do concern me a bit as his flight path may not be the most appropriate trajectory. I favoured specific criteria that were attached to levels as they were linked to the skills assessed and what the next stage was. I don't think I've met a teacher who thinks that these descriptions are an improvement.

I've seen where his interests, difficulties and progress lie. Knowing where he stands in comparison to the cohort would be useful for judging what extra support may be useful.

Gah and Brie I absolutely agree. Thinking back I was so far behind for much of primary school in reading and maths I would have been getting failing to meet right the way through, once I was old enough to understand what failure meant that would have devastated me, absolutely awful wording. What if all my teachers and parents had viewed me as failing. In the end though it meant absolutely jack and I left school with the top a level results in the school, got a law degree from an excellent red brick, flew through my professional exams and quite high up in chosen career. So anyone labelling a child as failing in anything in primary needs to get a grip. By the end of infants I'd see if a child could write their name count to 10 add and subtract 1 from numbers, play well with others, sit attentively, be polite, use a knife and fork. Everything else is a bonus. I feel so sorry for the teachers these days with so many pushy parents not satisfied unless a child is labelled a genius or well ahead, I often wonder if they actually see their child or just a projection a achievements they are living through vicariously.

With the removal of levels with the new National Curriculum, it has made it impossible to compare assessments made by different schools. Each school makes an individual decision about how to report progress and attainment; it should then be communicated clearly to the parents so that they understand if little Johnny is on track to meet the government-set age-related expectations (ARE).

In my primary school, we have 'working at' as the benchmark for pupils to achieve if they are where they 'should' be at the end of the year based on the expectations within each subject for that year group.

Children can then be teacher assessed as 'Working below' - quite far off ARE for their age group; Working towards - nearly where they 'should' be; Working At is within the expected standard for their year group; exceptionally bright children would be assessed as 'working at greater depth within the expected standard'.

But, as I say, that is just how our school has chosen to do it.

Brie - I couldn't tell you for definite but dds aren't miles ahead of their peers (I don't think) , so I would imagine a good half a dozen at our school are receiving exceeding. They are top table, but that just seems to be made up of mostly autumn/winter born and female, both of which they are.
As a guideline, I see reading level s are often cited on here, but dds are both 'free readers' and have been since year 1, so I have no idea what level they're on, but this isn't unusual at our school.

There were a few free readers in year 1 at my school (offapring included) they would indeed be exceesing :)

My DD1 (year 1) came home with her report and phonics test results, she got 40/40 on the test reading age of around 11 yet only met expectations. I questioned her teacher as to how this could be the case and basically was told our school don't give out exceeding expectations to year one so we don't skew the year two sats data. So essentially they are over cautious so if your child doesn't pass their sats they can't be blamed. Not quite sure why they write reports if they are not being honest. Anyhow I've seen DD1 progress and know she is doing well, DD2 (reception) is confident and secure - which I think means chatty 😊.

Our top table would be mostly exceeding too, that's probably the way it's supposed to work. There's often a profile of a few that arent, so to be exceeding in every single area is about 1-2% nationally. I'm not sure anyone was exceeding in pe in our group of friends even though a lot were academically, so they wouldn't count in that national statistic.

They are govt set "expectations." So how the school chooses to report not meeting/meeting/exceeding or greater depth is up to them but it's against national standards.

It's all quite frankly ridiculous. And if it's getting mn women confused who on the whole are well educated, it's really confusing a lot of people.

Hello - it's mad isn't it. I'd rather parents were just told how well their teacher thinks their child is doing and the progress they have made themselves rather than all the target driven crap.

I understand schools try to look as good as possible. So not assigning "exceeds expectation" easily makes sense or else they get penalised if the child doesn't continue to exceed.

But if year in, year out, a school finds no Y1-Y5 child exceed and then miraculously, 20% of Y6 pupils do in the national tests, won't they be caught?

Or at least asked why their Y1-Y5 teaching teams are so substandard compared to their clearly stellar Y6 team?

Talk to her teacher. Different schools do it differently. You need to ask the school to explain what it means for them.

My Y3 DD got "meeting expectations" for Maths but then at parents' evening her teacher told me that she came top of the class in the most recent Maths test they did so I'm not too worried about her progress in general. We haven't done anything at home this year apart from their set homework so I might try to do a bit more next year.