Year 7 report with y11 target grades!

[bourgeoisfishwife]

We received a report today for our y7 dc. For every subject they have given grades for current attainment and effort alongside a gcse target grade, based on their ks2 SAT scores.

Is this standard practice at all schools? It feels very wrong giving them gcse predicted grades in year 7. A lot can change in that time and it puts unnecessary pressure on them right from the start. Plus SAT scores at many schools (including the juniors dc went to) are often inflated so the target grades are unlikely to even be accurate. AIBU?!

Sorry, I meant some of my students are on course to exceed by three grades because they were given stupidly low targets, others down to ‘under achieve’ because they were given stupidly high targets. It all seems random.

I'm a teacher/leader in Education and have had OFSTED inspector training. I don't understand why parents fail to cause uproar about this. Most parents do not know what implications SAT results have on their child's secondary education. SAT results create all GCSE targets (even in subjects like Music and Art) and secondary schools ARE NOT allowed to lower these targets. The targets are generated by the FFT and Ofsted measure a secondary school's success on the progress children are meant to make based on the SATs result to the actual GCSE results. It DOES NOT matter if secondary schools produce their own 'baseline' assessments in year 7, or produce test results that show the SAT results were over inflated: Ofsted simply do not take this into account. This is why, in many areas in the country, primary schools arw primarily outstanding or good, wirh secondary schools being deemed inadequate or requires improvement. It's absolutely crazy. When SATs are being conducted, students receive a lot of support and take the test from the comfort of their classroom with familiar teachers present. As a result, there is a huge risk of cheating. In high school, students take GCSEs on individual desks in a school hall. No teachers are allowed to be present. This is why so many secondary teachers become depressed or are deemed rubbish teachers - they are given impossible targets to hit based on over inflated SAT results.

@user1511042793 if you're referring to a secondary school, it absolutely will use these targets. It may just be that they don't tell parents this, and keep all data 'in house'. There is no way for a school to get around it.

The targets are generated by the FFT and Ofsted measure a secondary school's success on the progress children are meant to make based on the SATs result to the actual GCSE results

No, not all schools use fft. Mine doesn't, Ofsted doesn't. The new inspection framework under consultation disregards internal school data. They want external results only and to go back to looking at quality of teaching.

Progress 8 is based on KS2, but it's nothing to do with FFT.

God I would have been predicted fail at everything in year 7. It was around year 9 things started to click. This is ridiculous.

Stupid system. My Y7 is predicted 8+ in everything based on his SATS, including subjects like Art in which he has no aptitude. Despite excellent effort scores his attainment is 'good' (meeting his target of A grades) or 'inadequate' (getting B-C grades) which has done nothing for his confidence even though we've said we're only looking at him putting in the effort. He will never have 'excellent' attainment in senior school, even if he got 100% in his exams.

Thank you for that very informative post MrsPworkingmummy. So very true. I wish more parents understood this.

And CaptainBrickbeard, it beggars belief doesn’t it?? All that pointless paperwork when all we care about is doing best for each individual child.

So what's the alternative? All those who hate the current system please do suggest an alternative criticism-free system of assessing students progress, and providing information for students, teachers and parents to use to devise education action plans.

They don't need to tell the pupils the target grade. The teacher will know this but will also know what level the child really works at and achieves. Some kids plateau and others come into their own as they mature.

I would go by teacher assessment of their ability.

Weightsandmeasures

Have a read of Dylan William’s suggestion-he has a very informative website online.

Yep, it's shit. I was a teacher for ten years (thankfully left now and hope never to return), and this was one of the things that I really hated. Every child was constantly being reminded of their target grades, and being told if they were on, above or below target. It's so demotivating for children who struggle, to be constantly told they aren't reaching their target (based on stupid KS2 data which often seemed like a load of bollocks when you actually got to know the child).

Teachers pay is now linked to it as well, so there is a massive focus on children meeting these targets and lots of stress for staff if they weren't. Class sizes getting bigger, less TA's thanks to budget cuts, so even less time and resources for teachers to give individuals the help that they need. And not a care about inspiring pupils to love learning and enjoy a subject just for the fun of it. Targets to meet, facts to learn and regurgitate.

Sorry, i appear to have gone off on a massive rant there. It just makes me so angry and sad, the state of education at the moment.

Wiliam with one 'l', msrabbit?

I am a year six teacher. I think what is worse is that a child’s expected year six SATS grade is based on their KS1 SATS result which in turn has been based on their reception data! School progress is calculated and shared across schools for comparison based on these figures! This, however, is kept internal and not shared with families or the child which I think would be very unfair. Children progress at different rates for varying reasons.

Also, can I add that maths and reading ks2 SATS results are not based on teacher assessment (opinion) any longer - only the test. This of course may result in some children scoring lower due to test anxiety etc. Science and writing results are based on teacher assessment but we are regularly moderated.

But what is the value of that information, weightsandmeasures when it is so badly flawed? Providing nothing would be better than providing something so incorrect and skewed. What currently happens is demotivating to pupils, parents and teachers alike. It is making everything harder for no reason. You can’t defend it on the basis that it provides information when that information is utter bollocks!

I think its your approach to it - if you don't care than your child won't either. My son's school has a green, amber and red system to give you an idea if they are going to meet their target grade. My son (yr 7) had an amber for maths but the maths teacher explained that it was only because the school had set his expected maths grade really high due to his primary school results. She said while he was on amber, he had already reached a grade that other children were only expected to meet by the end of year 8 and he had not even finished year 7 yet. Teacher was not worried, I was not worried, son is not worried about the amber.

so there's no point assessing them using anything other than GCSE grades really.

It is nonsense to say that it makes sense to treat KS3 and 4 as a 5 year course. GCSEs are not 5 year courses, they are two year courses, with a specific syllabus. It is total nonsense to grade someone using GCSE grades when they aren’t studying or being examined on the GCSE spec, or working at the level of the GCSE spec.

It’s even nonsense to grade students against GCSE grades in maths, when they are studying what’s on the GCSE spec.

You can only assign an even remotely accurate GCSE grade to a pupil when they have sat a full set of GCSE papers which have nationally benchmarked grade boundaries (and even that’s dodgy as grade boundaries are cohort-referenced and don’t represent a fixed standard). This usually happens in the autumn term of Y11. Anything else has been plucked out of the air.

I was talking about this to my DH last night. He said assigning GCSE grades to Y7 kids was reasonable, and when questioned further, he assumed that there was some sort of science behind it. That grade boundaries could be applied to internal assessments. When I described my actual process for assigning grades to KS3 kids (having a little think about the kid and sticking down a number that seemed reasonable) he was pretty horrified and said ‘oh, it’s total bullshit then’.

In my youngest child's year group (year 10) at least half of the children are on 'intervention' as their current grades are not considered good enough according to their flight paths.

I don't understand why parents fail to cause uproar about this.

Can I add a plea to this? If you are a parent who knows this system is shit, instead of telling your kid not to worry about inappropriate targets, or ignoring them on the report, or exchanging knowing glances with teachers at parents’ evening, PLEASE can you complain to the school about their system being shit? Ofsted have called it nonsense and demotivating to pupils, and it really is.

Send them this blog, that lays it out really clearly: learningspy.co.uk/assessment/how-do-we-know-pupils-are-marking-progress-part-1-the-problem-with-flightpaths/

Schools do this sort of shit because they think parents want it. Trust me, they aren’t listening to teachers calling them out on it.

One of the big dangers of this stupid system is that it can also skew how secondary teachers view their pupils. My DD who is 16 and about to do her GCSE'S got a 5 in maths and 6 in English and on the basis of that her expected GCSE grades were all A's. At parents evenings she would be reprimanded for not doing as well as she could and letting herself down. We kind of had to believe school as we are not educationalists and had been told all the way through primary that she was gifted and talented and being taught with the year 6's when she was in year 4. Roll on final year of secondary and she was ungraded in 3 subjects. They finally agreed to put her into a foundation maths class and she now lives maths and got a 5 in last mock( cannot get higher than that in foundation paper) I am so cross with myself ( for believing she was just naughtily/ lazy) and school for not realising she was way out of her depth and that was why she was failing. It is a rubbish system and works badly for kids of all abilities.

Ungraded in first round of mocks. Finals still to come obviously.

My Ds was told by his computing teacher at parents evening that he was disappointed in him as he only got 95% in his mock. He said that they expect 100% from him. The poor child has possible ASD and is currently struggling to understand himself and the world around him.

I think it is ridiculous for a teacher to put such high expectations on a child . I just hope he doesn't fall to pieces next year with the gcse pressure because it looks like with the long waiting lists for ASD assessment he is not going to have a diagnosis before the start of year 11.

Weightsandmeasures
So what's the alternative?

If targets are needed, how about involving students (as well as current teachers) in agreeing them? People don't like being held to (sometimes unrealistically high) standards imposed on them and respond better when they have a say in setting them.

How about we don’t try to predict the future 5 years in advance?

How about we don’t try to reduce potential future attainment down to a single figure (or worse, a 7- 7 or 7+)

How about we admit that it’s not possible to do what is being suggested we do?

The alternative is to trust teachers. They know whether your child is working hard in class, making progress, struggling, larking about being disruptive, or coasting. Teachers should feel free to tell us as parent this and expect to be believed. And I very much doubt that any teacher can give an accurate prediction of what is possible at GCSE until they are well into their GCSE course and have matured.

My DDs both got 5s in their SATs and were predicted Bs/6 (DD1 only did maths and English in the new system). DD1 only got 1 B, everything else was above. DD2 looks to be going the same way. Neither of them started to show what they were capable of until they were in Yr 10.

In my day, we called these Minimum Potential and one of my friends was told in Y7 that her minimum was 8.0/8.0 i.e to get all A*s.