To ask how schools decide what ‘Target Grades’ they give yr 7 kids?

[Starcup]

Posting here for traffic here. DC got report and ‘GCSE target grade’ were all the same, everything from art, music, Maths… all the same target grade in year 7.

There is a a different category saying ‘on target’ so teachers can write yes or no but it looks like the target grades have been set by some means and the teacher decides whether the kids are on target to achieve their target grades.

I’ve tried to ask a couple the teachers but the answer is never an actual answer, it’s always ‘well various ways’.

My question is, just because someone is good/bad at maths, it doesn’t mean they are going to be the same in every other subject.

Had there been a mixture of target grades I would assume the teachers would have looked over homework, class work, test scores and made a rough judgement, but I don’t think that’s necessarily happened otherwise all the grades would be a bit different. (Who is exactly the same standard across the board?)

DC didn’t do actual SATS in year 6 because of covid though they done mock ones and done well.

Ate there any teachers or parents that know? Do they do IQ tests or something then try to predict a GCSE grade but they don’t want to tell us?….

Just trying to understand so I can try to keep DC on track because the grades seem ridiculously high and I don’t want DC to feel like a failure if they end up with ‘Not on target’ and I think this will happen in some subjects, as DC has never done music in their life…

The grades are all the same - 8’s

They did mock ones and did well OP. Not 'done'.

It's a stick for Ofsted to beat schools over the head with and that's about all it's good for.

As PP have said, the most common path I've come across is FFT - which is an algorithm than puts in different factors (such as SAT score, CAT data, socio economic data about the child) and out pops GSCE predictions. It's actually a range of grades with their likelihood of happening (so, based on past national data, a boy entering year 7 with these test scores and from these socio economic circumstances, has 40% chance of getting a 7 in maths, 50% chance of getting 8 10% 9) and school will take the most likely. It's a pretty good forecaster for English and maths over a large cohort, but not really intended to be accurate for individuals or over the range of national curriculum subjects, because, as other PP have said, being good at maths doesn't automatically make someone good at art, and they don't have any test data for art.

Ofsted have jumped on this sort of data, though, because it's measurable. In fact teachers and schools are ranked by the progress a child makes in relation to this target. A teacher will have performance management linked to achieving FFT data (so an art teacher's pay progression can be based on whether their class meet the FFT data which was never intended for this purpose, and regardless of anything that has happened to the individual child in the past 5 years to knock them off that particular path). To be rated outstanding, I believe a school has to achieve an average of 3 grades above FFT data. (IIRC - been a few years since I was involved in a secondary Ofsted inspection).

So with schools and teachers having so much riding on meeting a child's FFT prediction, it's actually in the child's favour to have an ambitious one - a child with a very ambitious FFT prediction will find the schools resources directed towards them meeting that prediction.

@Courtier

They did mock ones and did well OP. Not 'done'.

Really? That’s your input?….

@spudjulia

It's a stick for Ofsted to beat schools over the head with and that's about all it's good for.

As PP have said, the most common path I've come across is FFT - which is an algorithm than puts in different factors (such as SAT score, CAT data, socio economic data about the child) and out pops GSCE predictions. It's actually a range of grades with their likelihood of happening (so, based on past national data, a boy entering year 7 with these test scores and from these socio economic circumstances, has 40% chance of getting a 7 in maths, 50% chance of getting 8 10% 9) and school will take the most likely. It's a pretty good forecaster for English and maths over a large cohort, but not really intended to be accurate for individuals or over the range of national curriculum subjects, because, as other PP have said, being good at maths doesn't automatically make someone good at art, and they don't have any test data for art.

Ofsted have jumped on this sort of data, though, because it's measurable. In fact teachers and schools are ranked by the progress a child makes in relation to this target. A teacher will have performance management linked to achieving FFT data (so an art teacher's pay progression can be based on whether their class meet the FFT data which was never intended for this purpose, and regardless of anything that has happened to the individual child in the past 5 years to knock them off that particular path). To be rated outstanding, I believe a school has to achieve an average of 3 grades above FFT data. (IIRC - been a few years since I was involved in a secondary Ofsted inspection).

So with schools and teachers having so much riding on meeting a child's FFT prediction, it's actually in the child's favour to have an ambitious one - a child with a very ambitious FFT prediction will find the schools resources directed towards them meeting that prediction.

Thank you for the informative post, that’s good to know.