2 thirds can read at 11

[robingood19]

It is interesting to seem how different media reported this

After 6 years compulsory schooling it is a bit suprising that one third cannot read properly or do sums.

Boys less capable than girls as usual

Mountains of "evidence" which don't match the children's ability which is only apparent with knowledge of the child.

Ahhh, isn't this your NQT Reception teacher who thinks she is marvellous?

Let's say she's had a wake up call

She based her assessments on the best in the class being a 9 and awarded profile points on that basis ... and yes it was externally moderated

Oooh my word.....

exactly!

Ay what point did you realise this, mrz - as the SMT I presume that you (for us it's all staff who internally moderate and raise questions like this, but for a larger staff I appreciate it may not be) did the internal moderation before it went external? And what on earth was the NQT mentor doing?? Or was it only when you had the children for their taster days in the new class and so got to know them a bit that the problem became apparent?

If that had happened where I work, everyone would have been swarming all over the data and the class after a few half termly progress meetings showed unusual patterns of progress, before it so much as got near going external...

I've been raising concerns since October about teaching. Then about low achievement levels in the Spring term. The EYFS coordinator came to see me in the Spring term and we both spoke to her. We both carried our literacy screening and the children were performing below expectations for the school Training and extra support was arranged. At which point profile scores were low and fit in with what we had observed.

So how did the sudden profile score inflation happen, if she was under such close observation??

I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound as if I'm criticising practice in another school - it's just that for the outside world to take continuous teacher assessment seriously (and for the younger children at least that HAS to be a better way of assessing them than pencil-and-paper tests) then the process has to be robust and rigorous.... and certainly from my experience of internal and external moderation, observations and training and mentoring from internal and external advisors, and also swapping of portfolios of evidence within clusters of schools to ensure parity, I had been under the impression that most schools were well on the way to making it so...

She has TWO lever arch files of "evidence" for EACH child ... that is SIXTY bursting to the limits files of observations and annotated photographs. No tests as we are talking EYFS just a load of paperwork that says these children can do x,y and z consistently and independently ... apparently the external moderators were immensely impressed and said it was the most thorough they had ever seen. It was held up as exemplary to other schools and guess what! it was rubbish!

Its complicated.

mrz
I'm an auditor not a teacher but I have learned to have a healthy scepticism of thick files. Cut to the chase as they say.
Clients always freak when I sit chatting to them about their personal lives while flicking through the invoice file and then suddenly saying "what about this one" - its all about patterns not bulk.
BUT
DH was assessed by the TDA for a PGCE inset that he ran - they wanted SHITLOADS of paper. He refused. They said OK. File thickness justifies their existence. NOT the validity of the observations.
I write Audit reports - I regard it as a failure if I run to more than two sheets of a4 at 12point font - because then I know that NOBODY in their right mind has read to the end!

Mrz, I suppose what I don't understand is why, if the school knew the assessments were wrong (which from your account, they did) , then they went forward to external moderation as they were (however thick the files).

Again, I can only cite what we do - before external moderation, we internally moderate, and the level that goes forward is the level the staff agree upon (the message is very clear from the head that it is the whole school's assessment that is being moderated, not the teacher's). If a collection of evidence does not represent the child in reality, and so as a staff we cannot hand on heart sign off the level given to it, then we internally moderate the level as something different. If you knew that these files did not represent the reality of the child's performance, how did it get signed off in internal moderation?

teacherwith2kids you are assuming we saw the files before the moderation ...

OK. I understand that different schools will have different approaches to this. Apologies.

Without going into details all I can say is the situation has nothing to do with approaches.

I always thought that level 4 started out being the average and then under the previous government this morphed into being expected. Which is a bit mind-boggling, because anyone who understands numbers knows that you can't expect everyone to be average, that isn't how it works.

Personally I'd much rather trust what my teacher tells me about what my child can and cannot do and what they should be striving for than trust one test that they take on one day - however much they've drilled for it.