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?!

This is actually a really interesting. As with many fads in education, there is clearly a validity issue with flightpaths.

Also just FYI A level grades are predicted/judged from GCSE data. A score is derived from GCSEs which is then used to predict A levels based on previous cohorts (e.g. 60% of students with this score at GCSE obtained a C at A level in this subject). Again, schools are judged against these national statistics (and this is where "progress" comes from - and helps the government create league tables that you can access online on their "compare school performance" website). The higher the progress figure, the better the school's score against national data.

It's an interesting debate because, on the one hand, parents want to know how well schools are doing, and quantitative measures of progress are often fairer than overall measures of attainment as these take into account approximate starting points for the children and are more likely to be able to give an idea of whether children can achieve their potential, as opposed to, say, coasting grammar schools.

On the other hand, you get the "guessing", sorry, "professional judgement" of ks3 progress measures, with all teachers under pressure to show that their classes make good progress. This means that there is highly likely to be bias in the system (automatically inflating grades in-line with their predicted progress - in many schools this might mean a mostly green/yellow spreadsheet rather than a mostly red one) until the music stops at the end of y11, with whoever is then teaching them left accountable for their results.

I'm doing a Masters in Education at the moment and have to do an essay over Easter. I was going to do it on implementing the new RSE legislation, but I might do it on measuring progress instead!

Ooh if you do, medusa Becky Allen wrote a good post about it too rebeccaallen.co.uk/2018/05/23/what-if-we-cannot-measure-pupil-progress/

I have mixed feelings about this. One child's school does the same but based off CAT scores taken in year 7, not SATs. I have found it to be useful. She is prone to laziness and her teachers tell her she could do better based on target scores. She puts in a bit more effort and reaches the targets.

I don't think it should be done on SATS for all the reasons stated above.

What actually happens with the lazy child is that the teacher sees they aren’t putting in the effort and based on that downgrades them compared to targets.

Kid then pulls their finger out and so the teacher boosts their progress towards the targets.

Both times the teacher makes up current attainment relative to the target to fit what they see in the classroom.

Thank you noblegiraffe!