To be disappointed about UK school reports

[Itisaniceday]

Posting for traffic and advice.

DD is in year 9 and has an EHCP. I honestly can’t tell how she is doing at school. The reports are so general and the meetings with the teachers once a year are only 5min. Once a year meetings with SENCO to tick a box for the LA report and them to get the additional 10k they get for her.

Growing up in a different country we had reports every 3 months: 1 to 10 you were scored; also the place you were in in relation to your peers was given. If you didn’t pass the year you will repeat it.

Please explain the UK system to me. My concern is she will get to GCSE and they will tell me, sorry she didn’t pass; not place on the sixth form for her, etc.

I am happy she is ok to go to school everyday but I would like to know more reg her progress.

They're completely pointless other than mock exam results.

If DD has an EHCP, the provision she requires should be in there. If it isn’t, you should request an early review. On their website, IPSEA has a model letter you can use. Once the support is detailed, specified and quantified in the EHCP it must be provided.

The AR process should be more than just a tick box exercise. The advice and information to feed into the review process should be circulated at least 2 weeks before the review meeting. Then you have the meeting. Then there is a report circulated within 2 weeks of the meeting.

EHCPs contain outcomes, not targets.

If she has an EHCP, there should be a review each year, to which you are invited. It depends what the EHCP has as the SEN need too.

Some children with an EHCP have a global learning delay, some have emotional and behavioural issues, some qualify because of ADHD or ASD, so it will depend on how your child is affected and what progress she is expected to make.

Assuming she’s in a mainstream school, she’ll be selecting options for GCSE, probably in the spring term, unless the school has a three year GCSE course. Some exams are foundation or higher tier, depending on the ability of the child.

I’d ask for a meeting to find out in more detail what your expectations of forthcoming exams should be and whether they’re realistic. Ask advice about tutoring too.

Knowing your child is bottom out of 200 is meaningless though, unless you have an idea as to what is expected especially if a child has SEN. Being bottom of the year group doesn't tell you if they've made progress, or how far away they are from the expected level. They could have made huge steps forward and still be bottom of the year, or they might have made only a little progress, or none at all. Impossible to tell from a position relative to others.

Surely if your daughter is in Year 9 she should be able to tell you how she did on a test (which as there's no national exams in Yrs 7-9 these will just be school specific internal tests).
She must know if she's done ok or not. The teacher would say something to the class if they were all "failing" in a test (wouldn't they 🤔)
Does she find the work easy or hard? Is she struggling?
If her score was "54" and the class average was "47" then she has done better than average. So that's good. But what does "54" actually mean? That's what you need to know.
Does the school have a parents Facebook/WhatsApp? You could ask on there if people know what it actually means.

My dd repeatedly told me she was struggling and the school repeatedly told me not to worry she's one of the top in the class in top set etc etc. Refusing to help with dd emotional distress. Anyway SATS come around and she's 'working towards' so is in fact below the national average- it's just a shit school so she's one of the top students ffs. Anyway I got her a tutor and she improved then I realised she's learning nothing in school and getting anxiety from being forced to attend. I now home educate her and she's doing brilliantly.

My son has an EHCP and I never get any information on him either. I only know he's so significantly behind because I now know to supplement school learning at home

It's not right for hat it's so hard to get information out of schools about our children. They are OUR children we have parental responsibility not the school and yet they feel it's ok to gov us off.

DD has a maths tutor, but it looks like she may need science and English too

I have tried before to ask for meetings, more information but not much luck.

The annual review process, including the AR meeting, is a statutory requirement. An AR must be held at least every 12 months. If the correct process isn’t being followed, IPSEA has a model letter you can send to the LA.

It would help to read IPSEA and SOSSEN’s websites to learn more about the law surrounding EHCPs.

Because the measurement is arbitrary and fixed. The pass rates for GCSEs and A levels are adjusted based on cohort performance.

Saying every child “should be” at 100 when some have challenges which means their absolute best is 90 is horrible.

What benefit is there in knowing where she sits in a cohort of thousands? Or even her class? I don’t care about anyone else, just whether she is meeting her potential and being supported or stretched where needed.

It’s shown in relation to all children in Wales in that school year. I’m pretty sure they give their ranking. It’s meaningless, demeaning for some kids and I’m not at all sure what benefit they think it is.

Why does it matter where they are in relation to others though? People have different natural abilities.

It’s not the class or the year. It’s all the year 8 children in the country.

knowing she’s 100th out of 5000 (as an example) is meaningless! So what?!

someone will be “top”, someone will be “bottom”. It doesn’t determine their ability or worth.

blunt measurement and one sure fire way to destroy their self confidence.

(can you tell I was raised by parents for whom anything less than 100% was an insult to them? My DD’s achievements are not a reflection on me. As long as she is doing her best and being given whatever support she needs I’m content. The system sucks. These are humans, not robots.)

Surely if your daughter is in Year 9 she should be able to tell you how she did on a test (which as there's no national exams in Yrs 7-9 these will just be school specific internal tests).

The title of this thread is an issue - there isn’t a UK school system. There are national tests every year in Wales (English x2, Maths x2 and Welsh).

I know that lol. I was bottom at Art and music. Because It shows how they compare to others in the same age group getting the same education

As for demeaning how? Not everyone can be top. That's life Why should people who are doing well not have it recognized as to not upset others who don't do so well?

And our class positions were taken from tests that we had regularly. Used to give out percentage score and class position. Eg 95% 1/14. Or 65% 14/14. Simple and easy to understand

the demeaning but related to the arbitrary expectation of 100 and anything below that being “behind”.

if that child’s max is 90 it’s demeaning to measure them against an arbitrary figure of 100.

I’ve no issue with percentages. They aren’t in any way subjective.

@DeclutteringNewbie I did not know that about Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
If the OP is in Wales there must be a guide to what the results mean so she could just look it up.
Are you in Wales @Itisaniceday ?

We are in London

My DD's national test results did not have a number ranking at all, just where she placed in various different years in a coloured graph - though last year was her last one so might be different this year.

I voted YABU OP - mostly because there is not UK school report standard format, so it's school issue rather than a UK wide issue. DD's school report has her target level, the level she is working on and if she's on target, below or above. I didn't quite understand the levels thing (how many level are there? what does it all mean?) but once she picked her GCSE choices they switched to target grades and that was much easier for me to understand (also not British, coming from a completely different system).

Why does it matter where they are in relation to others though? People have different natural abilities.

Because some kids have the ability to achieve but will quietly coast along at "average". If their parents see a report indicating they are doing average, they may talk to them etc encourage them to work harder to achieve better. Not everyone has an instrinsic work ethic, lots of kids do better if there's an element of competition against peers

And if you give parents that info they can determine whether it can be used to helpfully spur on a child who may be twiddling thumbs a bit.

I'd like it if indications of relative performance were available and parents can just opt out of receiving it for their child if they feel its not relevant.

The biggest issue in my view is that primary schools in particular write reports in a style that emphasises behaviour and effort, thus leading to reports that read very glowingly, even if a child is a relatively lower attaining but well behaved trier. This is nice, but if there's little/no comment at all about real or relative attainment, it can lead to parents thinking their child is doing better than they are, simply because they do try hard.

Is it a private school? The reporting example you give looks unusual and pretty rubbish compared with state schools where I've worked or where my dc have gone in recent years.

And opt out of their child's results being used in that way?

My DS was “working towards age related expectations” all his primary school life. That never told me how he was progressing or whether it was a small way behind expected or way behind. Lockdown gave us the opportunity to use lower years materials to find his level. When applying for an EHCP the SENCO went back and measured him against younger targets and found he was working at a level around 3/4 years behind expected.

Now he’s at secondary. A reading test (which gave current reading age which was very useful) rated him in the top 100% of readers. The only “measure” we have is assessment scores based on multiple choice where we aren’t quite sure whether a higher mark than last time is progress or luck.

We do work at home at the level DS is at and gauge it from there. getting in front of teachers to ask about process is far more helpful.