Why can't parents ask this question?

[Creole]

Why is it a sin to ask how your child is performing in comparison to the rest of the class? Surely this is what a lot of parents want to know.

Or does this question make you sound like a very pushy parent?

No, I don't think I have missed the point.

How will knowing where you child is in class help them to improve?

It doesn't.

Knowing what you child needs to do to improve, and helping them to do it, will help your child improve.

If your child is top of the class and is coasting it doesn't matter that they are top, they are still coasting. What matters is that childen make progress. It doesn't matter where they are in relation to other children.

You obviously want to do what is best for your child and want to help. What you do is the following.

Make a 5 minute appointment with the teacher at the end of the day and have a chat.

Ask what your child's targets are. (she should have up to 3). Ask what the teacher feels she needs to do to reach those targets and exceed them.

Teacher will be chuffed to bits, you can help your child, and your child will make progress.

Being told, 'Your child is in front of Bert, but behind Flossy', will do nothing to help her, or to help you help her.

MB has not missed the point at all - you need to know waht to do to improve, no matter where you are 'ranked' in the class. If the school doesn't provide reports or data more than once a year then I assume it is primary, in which case do as MB suggests and pop in for 5 mins at the start/end of the day.

I tend - gasp - to feel also that my child's teachers know what they're doing. I do realise this is a very slack and inferior thing to feel, though.

and if it is primary, then why not take the pressure off a bit, there is far too much pressure put on kids at far too young an age IMO

I've asked before (in fact I ask pretty much every parent's evening - just in case it's changed) because my DD isn't very good at maths and I don't want to be a pushy parent and get her a tutor unless it is really necessary, or suggest extra help at school with the special needs teacher. Turns out she's about in the middle of the class and just lazy . I don't blame her really, I hated maths too!!! I don't think it's being a pushy parent, fo me as a parent and not a teacher I don't really know what level I should expect DD to be at. She's 7 in a class of 8 year olds (birthday in late August) and will obviously be a little late in developing with some things compared to her older class mates.

You slack old slapper MI!

MB, what a fabulous explaination, thank you for highlighting how important how the child is doing according to their abilities. That strategy is so much more motivating than nth place in the class, or achievement/effort grading. (And I suspect much harder for the teacher to 'mark' than the traditional 7/10, A, B, C etc.)

I await DD's parent's evening with interest next week.

when I was at primary school we used to have a test every month, and then got to sit in order of where we came - top marks at the back, those on lower at the front! How awful!!!

re 'it is harder' for the teacher, it isn't really, once you get into the swing of things. you tend to think, 'What would I like X to do' and then think of something that is measurable.

so 'you must try harder' isn't what you are looking for! Or 'Be neater'

You pick something like, 'Please underline the date with a ruler'

Or 'Please go over and underline the key words and learn them by next lesson'

I love threads like these (am a teacher) MB has said all really though I will add that I don't even collate the information in that way so I wouldn't BE ABLE to give it.

Now you say it I realise that I don't either!

How funny.

I've never even thought about it before.

If pushed I suppose that I could tell yo uwho did best in their last AS exam, and who did worst, but the rest? no idea

Perhaps it?s me that lives on Mars!!
Teachers have never kept me informed properly. I only found out that DC was Gifted because I made a demand under Data Protection - I was only told 'doing nicely'.
MI: of course I trust the teachers. Why wouldn?t I when we have just had an Ofsted which says that the school has made no progress or improvement since last being inspected 4 years ago?

We had a place dictate where you sit system too clairemow - if you wer top you were beside the heater. And the seventies had long, hard winters....

I don't think that anyone is sugessting that parents should be kept in the dark.

It is just the nature of the information shared that is being discussed.

I just don't 'get' how being told you child is 6th in the class helps them to improve. Or helps you to help them improve

If basic communication between school and parents is bad, that is a different issue and needs to be addressed.

As far as where I work (state secondary) we have the following. A parental consultation day when all parents are given a 20 minute appointment with the childs form tutor. progress and behavious are discussed and parents, child and teacher agree on new targets.

There are 'ordinary' parents evenings once a year.

There are two 'short' reports (self referenced, so telling you if your child is meeting their targets etc) for attainment and attitude. And positive attributes ot problems are flagged up.

One longer report with all the info from the short report plus a written comment (of 240 characters) from every teacher.

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I think tha mosr schools are looking at this sort of thing now snorkle. Formative assesment is the latest big thing in the 'ed biz' We have had a few training days on it. Ofstead are very keen on it.

Studies show that done well it has the biggest imact on learning of any school based stratagy, much more so that the 'multiple intelegences' stuff thatwas the last 'big thing'

TBH it is all faily obvious really. How can you improve unless you know what you do well, and what you do poorly on, and someone tells you how to improve. As parents we do it all the time.

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Martianbishop, I don't think anyone really cares if their kid is 6th as opposed to 7th in the class.
However being in the bottom 3 even if that's within "normal" development is something I would care about a lot.
Also, it's hard for a parent to look at a child's work and tell if he's doing better than the "average" for his peers or worse.

Why does it matter, given that knowing this stuf has been shown to make not one jot of difference to the progress they make? In fact it hinders progress.

What you need to know is how to help your child make progress, not where they are in relation to the kid sitting next to them.

If knowing that s/he was 'below average' helped you make them 'above' average, then there would be some use to it. But it doesn't. What you need to know is if your child is making the right amount of progress.

If my son's class gave class marks he would be at the bottom. This year, however he gas made astonishing progress. This is what I need to know. My very able dd would be at the top end of any class she is in, but atm is marking time. This is also what I nned to know.

Of my two children my son is making better educational progress. That is the helpful thing to know. Not their relative positions in the class. As far as my kids progress is concerned , their relative positions are meaningless.

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In most of these cases you will be give guidance bt the school.....or at any rate we help parents/kids choose the right courses of the children. We also discuss where children are in terms of their current and projected KS3 attainment levels.

In fact we give specific guidance on what they have to do to raise attinment.

So for example children in years 7-9 will routinely plot their current level against their projevted level to make sure they are on track.

It isn;t that we 'hide' where the children are in terms of tei education. In fact if formative assessment is to help them, they have to know 'where' they are in accurate terms. But what they don't need to know is where they are in a specific class. How other children are doing really isn't the issue, is it?

I can say to a parnet on review day, 'You child came in on this level X, is currently working at X=1 or whatever which is what we could reaonably expect' or we could say, you child is making more progress that we could reasonably expect, or making less progress.

We can tell parents quite accuratly where their kids are on their kids learning curve. Where they are relative to the rest of the class is maningless.

and all of this is considerably harder work on the staff than simply saying 'John came second this year'. And we do it because it significantly raises attainment

Interesting martianbishop- but how can you judge a child's progress and what you expect them to achieve, unless you consider their progress compared totheir perrs?

To be able tomeasure their progress in isolation, surely you would need to know their underlying ability- is that what the CATS tests are used for????
Or are you saying, well, they got a Level 4 in Year 6, so they should be on a level 5 now....or something like that?

As a parent and a p/t teacher, outside of the state system now, I get very frustrated when teachers often refuse to admit that there is any pecking order (ability range) in a class- there is, just as there will always be in life. It's almsot as if the words "ability" and " intelligence" have become taboo.

I can't see what is wrong with parents wanting to know how their child is doing in comparison with their peers - going back to my original point- unless you know their IQ how can you judge whether they are doing ok by comparing them only with themselves?

I can see both sides.

Part of me thinks that it is none of my business how any of dd's classmates are doing.

The other part of me glows with pride when I found out that her and her friend have been removed from the reading groups as they can both already read now. (From talking to her I think her friend is WAY ahead of the game)

I won;t even have SATS to go on as dd's school doesn;t do them but I am glad as I have a relative with a same age dd who is forever comparing. It does my head in.

Finding out where dd is compared to the average child her age is a good thing, compared to specific children in her class, not so.

Knowing where your child is in the class is only useful if they were once in a different position to where they are now.

Great so they are at the top of the class, but what if they are there without any effort whatsoever - how would you measure progress?

We have a system (state secondary) where the students are tested in Y7 using CATS (cognitive ability tests) and this predicts what they should be getting in their SATs at 14 and the GCSEs at 16. In theory you can then decide whether a student is on target or otherwise... it has its benefits but also flaws.

I had a very bright maths student who was predicted an E at GCSE maths because when he'd done the CAT tests he couldn't speak English as he'd only recently arrived in the country form Hungary. He actually achieved a grade A which made my teaching look fantastic. In fact he'd learnt the language as well! We as teachers are judged on how our class perform in relation to their targets.... one year 5 of mine failed to reach their targets beacuse they had been excluded from lessons for drug dealing... not really my fault but it made my stats rubbish

Anyway my son is in reception and I'm dying to know where he is in relation to the rest of the class - I couldn't think of a way to ask either!!!

Basically we use a similar syatem to worzella.

You also use your professional ability as well. So, for example, if you have a child who is on a level 4, but who's ability is obviously higher than that (by questions and answers in class etc) yuo menraly adjust the statistics. You may then look for reasons why this child arrived in your class already under performing.

We don't just depend on SATs results, but use a battery of others, including one currently underdevelpoment by a group of Oxford academics.

Contrary to what people feel, we do take this sort if thing very seriously. I feel that we have a much better, and fairer handle on where a child is in terms of their attainment than simply giving marks out of 100 and a place in class.

And studies have shown that giving position in class is positivly harmful to students making progress.

If you give a class a mark the only thing that they concentrate on is where they came, and who beat who. They don't use the feed back to improve their understanding, to make progress.

If you give them comments they can take the information on board and get better.

I'm not doing this out of some wishy washy 'all children are the same' view on life. I'm doing it because if I do the children learn more.

In the end, I would rather my child reached their potential and came bottom of the class, than marked time and can 5th. Wouldn't you?