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?!

Oh dear. Big mistake on the schools part in sending home her work. You will be going through it with a nit comb looking for evidence that they did not mark every spelling mistake, said “well done for using a powerful adjective” on Tuesday but ignoring how well she used speech marks on Friday . You will be asking why every single pencil mark hasn’t been fully annotated by the teacher. You will be wanting to know where the sums are in her maths notebook, or why she isn’t doing long multiplication and carry ten like you used to.

“Wishy washy meets expectations and exceeds expectations” did we all spot the stealth boast?

also you csn just test your daughter from tests on line etc sndcfind out what she can do or not
or just relax and enjoy the summer if something was seriously wrong you would be told

Do the latter! She will not be a child for long .... let her enjoy it.

I think using the word “exam” for assessments being carried out in Year 2 is perhaps what has confused you. End of year assessments have always been carried out. Parents get the outcome in an end of year report. The report is quite clear in the information it gives about how your child is progressing.

You can either approach working with your child at home by doing any number of formal work books that can be purchased OR you can go to museums to learn science, history and geography, write diaries, do cooking, sports, crafts and projects together to learn about measuring, estimating, following instructions, summarizing, planning and having fun.

Guess which approach I prefer.

A test only shows you what a child could remember at a particular time on a particular day under a particular set of circumstances, which is why, even when statutory, KS1 assessment scores were only ever used as PART of the teacher assessment. The majority of the “evidence” used for the outcome is the day to day work the child can do, which you have got. As other posters have said, if you look through the exercise books, you will get a much better idea of what your child finds easy or difficult than being given a test score.

Well, you could go along to the local bookstore/stationers and buy the KS books applicable for her age group and use those at home……that way you’d at least know yourself where she needs help or not as the case may be.

I’m not really sure what you’re arguing for here? For constant assessments?

I have a 6 year old with SEN. He’s in the top reading band and can read fluently, he actually needs to move to the next stage away from reading bands entirely but because they can’t progress through that without taking assessments based on each book they read, he’s stuck below his actual level. Batshittery. He passed Gove’s phonics screening with full marks so at least he can read alien words fluently too…

His report said he was significantly below age expectations? I had no idea why so had to ask the teacher. She said it’s because all assessments are paper and he accesses writing primarily through iPads. She said he’s above age expectations but they had to put significantly below because he doesn’t access the assessments in the same way as other children. Make it make sense!

At 7, surely you can ask her if there's anything she's found difficult to practice? That's what I've always done. You can also look through her work books for yourself.

You're coming across as really pushy. The 'meets expectations' is a typical benchmarking framework (or our has moved to 'At') - probably to stop pushy parents getting overly competitive and harrassing their young children.

How often do they do tests? Also you are in a different education system. If schools here sent out all test papers and asked parents to sign them and send them back, they probably wouldn’t get 100% compliance. How does your country deal with language barriers, illiteracy etc amongst parents? Many parents here complain about having to complete reading records, having to sign off tests on a regular basis would tip many of them over the edge.

If you want to help her over the summer wouldn't the report be more useful? Ours are a good 4/5 paragraphs per child.
e.g. DS2 (in year 1) got 'expected' for English but the report explains his reading and sentence creation is good but he could work a little harder on hand writing.

Not too often in the first couple of years but increases a lot to one a week on average by end of primary. I expect most parents don't find it an issue as its what they're used to and wasn't a problem for me to adjust to but language barriers might cause issues but its not something that's come up in any discussions or news articles about issues with education.
On the flip side we don't have to complete reading records.

I completely agree, OP.
There seem to be some sort of secrecy around scores at primary schools in the UK - in other countries you get a percentage or at least a letter grade, not a ‘working towards expectations’ comment.
I see it as schools being patronising towards parents « they won’t know how to handle it / they will stress the children out / etc ».

Interestingly, when we moved from state to private we had grades for each class at the end of each term.

@Myskyscolour blame the Government! These are the ‘grades’ they expect schools to use now. Obviously private schools can do their own thing

I haven’t got any of this sort of detailed feedback. Just a general paragraph at the front from the teacher about her being a lovely child, kind and caring to peers etc (not academic stuff) and then a metric against each subject. Apparently she is working at greater depth in the core subjects then meeting expectations in music, PE, geography, history and RE. When I asked how we could improve in those areas I was told we couldn’t and they give every child meeting expectations in those areas regardless.

Ive taken on board all the comments and it seems the majority think I’m being unreasonable to even ask the question. I still think it’s a little strange that the general consensus is that parents should butt out completely and not question anything but clearly I will be recast as that awful annoying parent if I push it so will let it go!

Honestly OP, you are massively overthinking. The "exams" will have been on the core subjects, and you know she's doing well there. They won't have made her sit an exam in music, geography, PE etc. She's clearly doing ok across the board but if want to help her, at her age, take her to the odd museum, watch horrible histories, do some fun science experiments, stick the radio on and talk to her about what music she likes and why. Go run around the park throwing a ball etc.

So it sounds like she is doing really well.
I don't think primary schools can ever really assess the non core subjects accurately as there isn't standardised papers for these. If you wanted to boost her knowledge in these subjects then look at exploring them at home, pointing out geographical features, going to museums and looking at historical events.

Just to also add, apart from year 6 SATs the assessments are generally sat in the classroom. We have a class of 30 so no way of spacing them out. Therefore they are not always going to be the best measure when you spot Sally taking a sneaky peak at what the person sat next to her has written.

It sounds like you have a child that is already working above expectation for Core subjects and at expectation for others for the year. I also have a DS (year 3) who is like this. Its incredibly frustrating when you ask how can you help and support them to improve and you get a 'there is nothing' answer. We've also never got a score for any tests they did in Year 2 other than a 'he's one of the top' in his parent evening. But I remind myself that his teacher knows him academically best so to take their advise. This year we did get some feedback on a small area to improve upon.

We have taken to home workbooks (DS actually loves to do these in his spare time strangely) and reading at a higher level generally now.

I get what op means - theyve done the test- presumably ks1 sats- and dont even get given any results.
Our school did STAR assessmrnts and over 2 kids we only have seen 1 set for probably 5 years. Though i have asked in PE and verbally given. One meeting was particularly interesting as the teacher was saying dc2 wasnt that great at reading, i didnt agree. .. anyway i asked what the STAR reports said - 2 years ahead of age so…

DC2 also in ks1 sats when they were compulsory got like 98 on reading. Well, i knew that was not right. So we did the test at home and what a surprise almost full marks. So i said to that teacher erm what happened there - its clearly not right. But they couldnt say. Because it was statutory i assume at that stage the difference between ks1 to ks1 was also reported about schools. But i think what likely happened is because the ks1 tests last until the kid wants to stop, dc1 had just decided to stop half way through. Probably shows you cant test 7yo.

I 100% would have preferred my kids to progress in school when there were levels as the school really dont push more able kids at all. And met/exceeded is very wishy washy.

Also from a conversation with a ks2 teacher x didnt start this year exceeding so wont end it exceeding. WTF! So then absolutely no effort to move kids upwards then. Anyway they were wrong and the kid got exceeding.

At secondary we mostly get tests back. But no results are shown on reports. They scale against the yeargroup for each subject. But thing is with so many classes inevitably the teaching isnt the same anyway. (1-2 classes seem to have done a lot of sparx science but dd class have done none).
i would much prefer end of year exams - maybe even from primary. Our end of each topic ones at secondary are silly as its not consolidating large amounts and i think will lead to worse gcse results. Plus every homework almost is revision from y7 and so missed work there

The core subject results are what the schools have to report to Government at end of Y6. They will also report them to governors/Trustees after each data drop.

If your DD is working at greater depth level then she is doing well. If she wants to do extra school work over the summer there are books you can buy, but only if she wants to do it. Otherwise, let her have fun, plenty of reading and you can always bring in things like maths in practical ways eg measuring when cooking etc.

Schools should have on their websites their curriculum for each subject for each year. So you can get an idea of what she will be learning next year. Remember, our Government cram a huge amount in the curriculum. Good for a child to have a break before the next onslaught! If in England it’s only about 6 weeks before they are back at school

These are almost certainly KS1 SATs. I’m surprised school use the word ‘exams’, as this gives the tests a lot more gravitas than they warrant. The tests are about an hour long, not all day, and are usually done in the classroom. We used them to identify progress of both the individual and the class, and to identify any areas where extra input might be required. The results were never published, as the tests weren’t mandatory. Your child’s report will show their progress.

Hi OP

My DS is year 2 and last month he did his year 2 SATs there nothing major but they are tests just to see where the children are upto at the end of KS1. You will have an idea of how well DD has done in her year end school report. So to give you an idea I got my DS report this week the 3 core areas (Maths, Reading & writing) are what they focus more on at this stage my DS was marked as greater depth in 2 of those and on track for the other. You then get all the other subjects inc science and PE etc again my DS was greater depth or on track in all of them. At this stage of their school journey though whilst it's nice to see how well they are doing academically it really is more about how they are coping with school, friendships etc in my opinion anyway. If School have concerns I'm sure they will advise and I would expect they wouldn't wait to hit you with it in the end of year report.

Are you in Wales? Are they the personalised assessment results? In my experience schools don’t want to share this sort of information because if your child is struggling they won’t want you to know because they’ll have to put some effort in. You can request any information you want about your child’s education record using a data access request and legally they have to give you the information. A teacher in my children’s school told me that.

I would imagine that if she got all the fractions questions wrong, then her report will say that she struggles with fractions.

I suspect they don't want to send scores home because that will lead to parents making comparisons, and possibly children too, which is not helpful.

My kids’ school did this in secondary. Something about getting a snapshot of…I don’t know…something. It was made clear it was for internal use/information only, to guide the teachers in their instruction of the kids. Neither the kids or parents were given the results. No doubt because the test itself had no bearing on any official result. It was just a tool. It makes sense to keep them confidential, because parents would no doubt engage in the “my child got x% how did yours go?”, and draw conclusions from that.

I actually did get some of the results for my DDs testing but only because she gets support for learning in some areas. They actually mean nothing as they’re standardised and averages and just an indicator of where they sit nationally. If you’re being told she’s meeting or exceeding expectations then fine, if she’s not where they think she should be they will speak to you about it and what both the school and you need to do to support DD. Use the resources you have (eg likes of book) to see where you think she needs help if you must.

Edited to add, the kids don’t get told their scores either.

I kind of get where you are coming from, but not everything you do with your child has to be academic learning. What can you do to help? Teach your child life skills, involve her in what you are doing, cooking, baking, gardening, using the washing machine, hoovering - all really useful. Going through recipe books, choosing what to have for tea, going to the supermarket, how much will it all cost, Following recipes. Learning new skills, find an app and learn a language together, bulk that out by learning about the country, cook something from that country, (we love cooking, can you tell!). Learning new skills like how to use a train timetable,

not everything needs to be academic learning.