To be worried about ds year 7 English level?

[House4]

My ds has finished year 7 with an English level of 4a. This is what he started the year on. He has officially made no progress throughout the year. His end of year target was 5c.

The reports were given out on the day before the last school day so not enough time to digest and ask the teacher. It's playing on my mind now.

He has either met or exceeded levels in all other subjects. He has achieved a 6c in Maths (and has always been in the top set).

In year 6 SAT's his Writing level was 'working towards' so I had asked the Year 7 English teacher earlier in the year if he needed extra help and she said no. He doesn't particularly dislike teacher or lesson and was given 'good' for effort, behaviour and homework.

I will obviously speak to the school as soon as they start again in September but should I do anything now? I.e. Have him assessed independently or start to look at private tutoring? I do not want it to be 'too late' to get help by the time he is sitting his GCSE's.
Any advice appreciated.

I'm aware of how it works - id be delighted if DS came Home with a level 5 - I really would!

I know he's struggling - his grade is irrelevant - what he's not getting is support at school -

I want to help him - but school aren't helping me to do that - I don't know why?

Surely supportive parents are a god send?

My dd did his GCSEs this year- he has very little idea wht he is going to get in English and Maths-particularly Maths. People in his set did several mocks and got every grade possible. Including one 9. And one 1.............

"All parents in all schools are in this position."
Yeah, I know-bizarre, isn't it? Fortunately, ds only needs a 4 for maths, and he should get that. But he needs a 7 for English, so fingers crossed.....

As Noble says, you have no basis for believing these grades.
Although tradition dictates that we need to grade and sort the poor blighters somehow and so this seems as good a way as any. I am not actually planning to put my dd in for a GCSE at the moment (although I know some people do put primary school children in for GCSE maths), but her teachers who have also taught many yr11s would be telling us if she was still at that stage in yr11 then she might scrape a pass (if 4 remains the pass mark) bit to brace ourselves that she might not pass. The teachers have no way of knowing whether by yr 11 she will be more interested in boys and drugs than in her GCSE marks, or if we will win the lottery and plough our millions into tutoring. These marks might be wildly inaccurate although hopefully by the time the current yr7 are doing GCSEs they will be a more known quantity. We have been told what the school think are excellent marks so a mid4 at the end of autumn term is considered excellent. Whether that child will end up getting a 7, 8 or 9 no one knows but they obviously think that the child is doing well.

to commit to a % pass figure .... because the grades are calculated on a bell curve and thus cannot be assessed in isolation from the national picture

I think that is a tad disingenuous. The pass rates (4 or above) are being pegged to last years pass rate (C or above). I would have thought that any reasonably experienced teacher would have an idea of how their kids this year fit with previous cohorts.

I can well imagine there would be a bigger error range than before, and if an individual teacher is teaching on the 3/4 borderline it would be hard, but surely if a school usually gets say 70% pass for maths, then they should be expecting e.g. 65-75% pass this time (adjusted if cohort is known to be particularly better or worse than usual).

Sometimes I think some teachers don't help themselves. Yes, it is harder to predict this year. Yes there will be wider error bands, and saying a 6 versus a 5 or a 7 for an individual student will be harder/impossible but to bang on saying it is impossible to predict anything is nonsense imo.

NB. My comments above are wrt predicting results for this year's Year 11. Any 'flightpath' grades for current y7s will by their very nature be very vague.

Teen remember the pass grade for schools is a 5, not a 4, and a 5 is much harder to pin down because it's not pegged to anything.

Also, in terms of the 4 pass percentage, Ofqual have warned schools to expect much greater volatility in exam results for individual schools than previous years, adding another level of uncertainty.

noble I'd forgotten about the school pass being different from a real pass (totally ridiculous - most parents won't give a toss, and just want to know if kids will gets what's needed for 6th form and later jobs).

I also agree re volatility as it will depend on how well individual schools have reacted to the changes. So bigger error bands. I guess there is the question of when an error band gets so big that it becomes pointless (e.g. 50% will pass, +- 50% would be pretty useless).

Peng
The part of your post I quoted was about a HoD giving a %pass figure, not individual predictions. I would expect that a HoD should have an idea about a cohort as in 65-75% will pass (as in 4+) (or even 60-80%)even if with the borderline candidates they don't know which ones will pass.

However I fully accept that is 'pass' means a grade 5 that is massively harder this year as no one has any idea where the borders will be except for 4 and 7.

I also agree it is an educated guess (as always) and it will be looser than before. I just don't like it when I see the words impossible bandied around.