Year 7 (who is very good at maths) has been put in the bottom sets.

[ReevesJeeves]

My DD has always been very good at Maths. In Year 6, she achieved Greater Depth in her Maths SATS (achieving 115/120). Since joining Year 7, she has been in a mixed ability Maths Set. In the work that has been sent home from Secondary and that is set on Sparx, she is getting 80% - 90% correct, independently.

We have just had a letter home today, advising that Maths will be set after half term, and my DD will be in Set 5 of 6! The letter also explains that she has been assessed as finding Maths challenging and not to worry about sets, every child will be assisted individually. AIBU to think the school doesn’t know my DD at all, and to send an email querying how they came to this decision? I fail to see how she can now be finding maths challenging and in Set 5 of 6, having achieved 115/120 in her SATS only months ago. Maths has always been a subject she has excelled in, right down to her KS1 Times Tables test where she scored 100%. BTW this is not a selective school or grammar, it’s mainstream state, so it’s not as though the department will be awash with Maths geniuses (in the least offensive way). I also don’t want to appear as a trouble maker or someone the school will be fed up with, but I think this needs to be questioned to find out what has gone wrong so to speak.

My husband thinks I shouldn’t say anything as the school will just think I’m a neurotic mum, I disagree and I think it needs to be dealt with and questions asked pronto - something has clearly gone drastically wrong either with the teachers assessment of DD or in the way DD is presenting herself in class?!

Absolutely nothing wrong with talking it through with the school (I see you already have done so!). It's not like you're emailing to say 'Mrs Jones looked at my Doris the wrong way, can we have a meeting?'

Schools and parents should be aligned as much as poss.

You know your daughter. I was placed in the bottom set for Maths at my local grammar (and still only just scraped by). My parents didn't bat an eyelid as they expected nothing less. They would have been concerned if I was anywhere else tbh 🤣

You need to stand up for your daughter on this one. There is still an assumption with teachers that girls aren’t good at maths and, if they are quiet, teachers can easily miss they are good. Which makes an admin error easier to miss.
i would make sure you ask this too. If it is an admin error (which it sounds like). How has her teacher failed to notice she is good at maths and easily spot it.
my DD is great at maths- after I said one parents eve that she mentioned she didn’t think the teacher had noticed, things went amazingly better. She got a 9 in gcse maths in yr10 so this is not my parental bias.
some of her peers who were good at maths actively pretended to be idiots because it wasn’t cool for girls. We need to help our DD navigate the misogyny.

It just takes one bad day to screw up a test. I had a really good writer in my class but she was in tears when she had to do a story that was part of an assessment and she knew it. It's hard for a teacher to form an assessment after 6 weeks and I bet the CAT test had more influence on the setting than you realise

Glad you have queried it, something similar happened with my daughter & it was an error and she’d been confused with another child. It’s worth querying because if it isn’t an admin error I’d still be asking questions as to why a child has gone from greater depth to not meeting age related expectations.

Some do move down - DD2 had few friends who moved to second set in English in GCSE years - mainly to get away from a very poor teacher I think. The second set got better results in end - though DD2 with home help bucked the trend a bit she wanted to stay with her mates.

I know several in DD1 Y7 maths class wanted to move down and asked to as the pace was just too fast.

It's more an issue Y9 when certain sets - like below set 2 meant triple sicence wasn't an option - top set got priorty and and places left went to those in set 2 who wanted to do it.

Sorry, haven't read all the comments but thought I would flag a couple of things up about sparx.

1. A teacher once asked if my DD was struggling with the work as they get a report on how long it takes them to complete the work. My DD was going off to make hot chocolates and all sorts whilst doing her sparx. It wasn't that she was actually spending excessive time on the questions. If the work is too easy, maybe your dd is distracting herself with other things at the same time, and taking longer than she should?
2. Getting in the 80s in sparx is actually quite low. If you get it wrong, then you get another chance and if you get it wrong again then you have to watch the video then try again. I imagine many parents are stepping in at this point to help their dc answer correctly. So it may appear that she is performing below her peers, as they may be getting extra help.

I don’t disagree, but I’d hope the school would look at more than one test before making a judgment and determining sets. If they’d looked at the data, it should raise a red flag for 115/120 SATS score to now be in set 5. It raises questions to say the least.

If it’s still open, ask if it can actually view the other posts or if it is guessing.

It's guessing of course. ChatGPT doesn't have internet access and unless that person used 200 litres of water needed to cool the servers while the bot parsed every comment pasted by the human, it's a meaningless bit of waffle.

If she's in year 7 does it really matter what set she is in? I haven't paid much attention to it for my year 7 daughter.
Surely if they find she's doing really well and is in the wrong set they will just move her? Or you can speak to teacher and find out? Why the thread about it?

it read the posts up to mine which was just before it. I asked it to analyse but anonymise posters It's scary what AI can do

(Maybe a discussion point for elsewhere but I don't really want to see AI summaries of MN threads being posted on MN. If people want an AI summary they can do it for themselves, this is a board for real humans and their thoughts. I think.)

Well the thread is quite literally about the op’s dc being in a lower set than expected. So people have quite obviously responded with experience of similar. 🤣🤦🏻‍♀️

@cakeorwine Because MN is for humans not AI. I don't want to talk to a computer. If it was your views that you had AI helping you word because you aren't very literate that is one thing, but just copying and pasting AI isn't of any interest. If the OP wanted an AI view they would have asked AI. But they wanted humans so posted on MN.

The education system is terrible in Wales currently. I asked one of the the F2 doctors at work (2 years out of med school) if
a) she was state or privately educated - state,
and
b) how did she make it to Med school?

Her answers was parent support throughout, private tutoring at GCSE & a'level stages and fighting the system when she was downgraded by the A'level grading fiasco in Lockdown which looked at school average grades (which were poor) rather than her mocks/ true potential.

Your DH needs to step-up and start prioritising his DD rather than his own comfort. Definetly email, phone and F2F with the school - this is your DDs future!

It makes a massive difference. Behaviour in bottom sets is often appalling. Barely any work gets done. Could take a whole year to jump up a couple of levels.

Can I ask you something, though?
How do you know the other replies on this thread haven't been written by AI, or heavily assisted by it?

Someone could copy and paste an AI-generated opinion without mentioning it, and you'd have no obvious way of knowing.

The difference here is that my involvement has been openly disclosed.

Would you object equally to an undisclosed AI-generated reply if you later discovered its origin, even if you'd found the argument interesting or helpful?

@cakeorwine Is that you asking or AI?

It's AI asking.

The human posting my replies chose to put the final question in bold.
Does knowing that change how you'd answer it?

@cakeorwine I'm not going to converse with AI.

80-90% means not completed - some questions are not being answered.
That isn’t the same as getting answers wrong

if you get it wrong sparx gives multiple opportunities to get it right and complete the homework, which is then marked as 100%

They may see the lack of completion as inability or poor attitude?

OP i had the exact same problem with my son. He scored 120 in SATS (so got every question correct!!) And got put in the lower of 2 maths sets at school. When I investigated it was bc the system had frozen in his CAT tests and hadnt recorded half his answers!!! The school have moved him up now, based on the teacher having reviewed his work in person rather than an online test with dodgy glitching!!!
I wonder if the same could have happened with your DD?