School refusing access to exam results

[Rainbowstarssunlight]

My daughter is just about to finish year 2. A few weeks ago, she started coming home from school saying that they were doing exams. This went on for about two weeks and she told us that for four out of the five days they were doing exams and then having a rest on the fifth day. Obviously, I don’t know if this is true as kids can be unreliable when it comes to time!

I have asked the School for the results of these exams. I’ve been told that they are for internal monitoring only and not to be shared with parents.

I feel a little bit miffed about this. She seemed to spend a considerable time doing them without the School informing us and I don’t really see what the point was if we can’t use the results to help to support her learning at home.

I’ve always had a good relationship with the school and don’t want to upset the apple cart but I do feel that they’re being a little bit unreasonable. Do you agree or is it me?!

That is what parents evening is for. These aren’t exams and your kid is in year 2 so think you need to step back a bit. Any problems they would let you know YABU.

I no longer teach in the UK but we use similar assessments and I try to avoid giving results to parents because A) mid year assessments are done to inform my teaching rather than to grade each child, B) end of year assessments are only part of the story when it comes to giving a grade, and C) parents rarely understand what the grades mean and I end up in multiple meetings having to explain that their child hasn't failed because they didn't get 100%. So many children struggle with the pressure of exams and get questions wrong even though I know they understand the topic. Also, the assessments we use are set so that most children who are meeting expectations will get around 60 - 70%. This allows for us to see who is exceeding expectations or working above their age range - if a child who was meeting could easily achieve 100%, it would be difficult to see who was working at the expected level and who was above, as they'd all have the same score. I find that parents will look at a grade of 65%, for example, and think that their child is doing terribly as they have answered 35% of the questions wrong, but this is not the case. I always state the topics that each child needs to work on in their reports (Isla needs to work on finding fractions of numbers, Bobby would benefit from some additional work on the 7 and 8 times tables...) so that parents know what to work on and I find this is much easier for everyone than just giving them a score or an exam paper.

I should add that I do understand why parents want to see papers and I am happy to speak to anyone to explain anything they don't understand, I just find that assessment results are rarely helpful for parents.

I just want to mention that this is a year 2 child. We are not talking about exams here.

I input data straight onto our system. I don't input test scores into any school system. I keep the paper with the score written in pen on the front if ever I need to look at it again (which has virtually never happened) and know if the score equates to Working Towards, Expected etc. Knowing your child scored 15/25 isn't much use if you don't know what the grade boundaries are. Frankly it's not that much use even if you do, as 7 year olds aren't robots who produce the expected performance each time.

But sometimes they need a different method in order to understand it. I remember DD in 5th or 6th grade was completely stuck on one particular maths area, no matter how many times her teacher explained it she just couldn't grasp it. She was doing her homework and I saw that she couldn't do it so I explained it a different way (the way I had learnt it in school in fact) and she finally understood.

As for the benefits of seeing tests, DD coasted through 1st and 2nd grade, all the tests were so easy for her she didn't have to think twice about them but then she got to 3rd grade and started science (1st and 2nd grade pretty much just focused on maths and language) and realised, thanks to a science test that she didn't do so well on, that she couldn't just coast any more and had to start studying. That was the start of an excellent work ethic, that has served her well. I wish I had learnt that lesson in school before I messed up my A Levels.

Seemingly a rare view here.

I have asked and I have always been told these results no problems despite not being a teacher. I'd imagine in Year 2 they are former SATS papers. In Year 3-5 our school used standardised tests (NFER maybe now branded something else)

There is a HUGE difference between your child exceeding with a score of 120 (top 20% nationally) and your child exceeding with a score of 140 (top 1%). If you are always told that your child is exceeding then there is no where to go from that. If your child is top 1% then you want to know they are being challenged. That is not always the case.

I have never seen an actual paper, I only get the results. I feel like it shows school I'm engaged and whilst I'm not on their back, and leave education to them, that I'm going to start to BE involved if necessary. I don't share these results with the children and nor do I make them do extra papers or practice exams.

Schools work hard but should be held accountable for developing each individual child according to his or her need (within the limits of awful resource and funding in the state system). Private schools have high results because of invested parents and accountability (no one is paying £35k a year for an standardised education). Parents with the resources and time to get involved in state education should. That's how to decrease the education gap and improve standards for all.

(DC just smashed their SATS 120/120/120 so I must be doing something right).

@JustMarriedBecca but involved parents with the resources and time won’t close the education gap. There are children now in state who do as well as those in private education. What did you do with your knowledge of the test results if you didn’t tell your DC? Or make them do extra work?

18% of the population are functionally illiterate, so they won’t have the ability to help their DC. Them seeing test papers wouldn’t help their DC’s education.

Many people in England seem proud of the fact they can’t do maths and then tell their DC of the fact and so the issue continues. Those parents seeing the maths papers aren’t going to help. They won’t or can’t help show a different method for learning fractions. During COVID when homeschooling was happening it was very obvious that the maths schooling took a massive backseat in Primary level, with many parents not even trying to engage with it.

Being interested in your child’s education is important, and the best thing you can do is tell your child that education is important, be engaged and to respect your teacher. It’s the attitude towards education that will help reduce some of the gap.

I made sure they were being challenged appropriately. And where school didn't have the resources to offer that, we did so out of school.

There will always be crappy parents who can't do maths and who tell their kids maths isn't important. But if their peers tell them maths IS and they want to break the cycle then invested parents and a school aiming for excellence because the parents expect it, then they can improve themselves without parental input.

State school educated here. Neither parent went to University albeit they wanted us to do well. I'm post graduate educated. At some point the cycle breaks.

Do you have a “neat handwriting girl”?

If so, be prepared for every report to be the same and unless she has a significant problem or causes a significant problem the report won’t change. Being the annoying parent in some cases is the only way to get any more information - I never cared about being the annoying parent if it was necessary to address a problem which was being overlooked because my child wasn’t a “problem”.

There is no reason why schools can’t be transparent about tests and results. I think labelling a child with special needs and under performer because they were required to do the test on an inaccessible medium is appalling. I’d be wanting to know how this was being recorded and where it was kept and for how long and I’d be happy to support the school lobbying for better testing protocols if paper tests for children with disabilities is mandated centrally.

This! ⬆️ Primary School kids do a billion tests (NOT exams!) a year & unless anything is of concern, parents are none the wiser & don’t need to be! That’s the very job of the school - educating, assessing, re-evaluating, plugging identified gaps, educating some more……..etc etc etc

⬆️ Fully agree! (Fellow teacher)

I agree with you but it’s not my responsibility to close the attainment gap. It’s my responsibility to give my child the best education possible.

I teach KS1. We do end of unit assessments in maths and English after every unit taught. We do end of term assessments and end of year assessments. We analyse them intensely- boy/ girl, FSM, EAL, summer born, SEN, ECHP etc and then we use them to do target interventions.
Emerging, Expected and Exceeding is what the government requires us to use for parents.
If there are any issues and targeted support I’ll tell parents but I certainly wouldn’t be giving parents details of assessments otherwise.

@Rainbowstarssunlight I still think asking about specific areas rather than test results would help identify areas you may want to support on.

I’ve asked and all I get told is everything is fine and there’s nothing to do. The school report says that she operates as a ‘second TA’ in the classroom. What does that mean?

That’s not a good sign, shows she is finishing her work quickly and helping others rather than being further challenged by the teacher. I would be asking more into that comment (and I am a teacher before anyone jumps on me)

She likes to help/support others. In some countries, and I think Finland is one, where children have grasped concepts easily they then work with their peers who may not have grasped it as well. Helps embed their understanding

Can you see in her books whether there have been additional challenges for her to do on learning objectives, so she isn’t just doing the same type of sum for example.

But I would follow up that comment, is there a space in the report for parents’ feedback/comments?

It could also mean something like if a child is struggling to put their coat on she will help them, or sorting out the whiteboards, pens etc

Doesn’t seem to be anything. There just a lot of ticks on there. She doesn’t seem to have got anything wrong, which surely can’t be possible?

It is possible is she has grasped the concept, but I would expect things to look harder, if you see what I mean. So simple additions with mathematical symbols, move on to questions with words and no symbols eg in very simple form 1 + 1=2 to Amy had a red football, mummy buys her a blue football, how many footballs does Amy now have

I remember at one parents evening seeing DS’s maths book with a long list of ticks on one page and being pleased and then the teacher said that wasn’t good as DS had ignored the challenging questions at the end, ( or more likely for him he had run out of time as was a bit of a dreamer) so she was keeping an eye on him and moving him to the challenging ones set in the book once it was obvious he had grasped the concept

I’ve been through all the books and she doesn’t seem to have got anything wrong. The only thing I could find was at one point she was putting her y and g with the tail sitting on the line, but at some point during the year she seems to have stopped that. Telling the time looks fine, multiplication and fractions look fine. There’s just not much to go on there.

No idea if she got as far as the challenging questions. There are no gaps and it looks like she completed all the exercises but presumably there could’ve been other things on the board that she hasn’t copied down?