Year 6 levels downgraded due to moderator review

[Cadmum22]

Hi,

My daughter is in year 6. Her attainment levels throughout primary school year on year for reading and writing have been ‘exceeding expected levels’.

She passed the kent test with a score of 360. Maths 112 English 126 Reasoning 122.

Her year end 5 CAT scores were Verbal 116 Quantative 118 Non verbal 132.

i do not yet have her SATS scores.

i received a call from her teacher today to say that they had used her writing work as a sample for moderators and they have downgraded her from ‘exceeding expected levels’ to ‘attained national average’. He said they appealed the decision as they could not believe it but the appeal was overruled and that’s that she will be downgraded. He was unsure if her secondary school will be informed.

My question is does this mean that everyone in the class will be downgraded the same for writing or just my daughter? It seems incredibly unfair that seven years of attainment is completely wiped away. Surely seven sets of teachers can not be wrong? She will be very upset once the report comes out.

if anyone can shed some light on this for me
I would very much appreciate it.
Thank you.

There is no 'slightly exceeding expectations' in SATs. That sounds like a school thing.

Yes, SATs just has GDS and EXS. The level in between is a school invention - as a SATs result, she could only ever have been ‘at expected’ or ‘working at greater depth within the expected standard’.

Yes this isn’t Sats scores I’m
talking about, I have no idea what they are. It’s the schools attainment levels.

Yes that's essentially made up. It's WTS, EXP, GD. What she has previously been graded as is largely irrelevant as those weren't moderated grades. Either she never really was GD or it came down to a lack of evidence/overzealous moderator. The latter is more likely. And just because someone gets EXP in Y6 doesn't mean they weren't above average in Y5.

Edited to add: I know you know this btw Noble! Just read it back and sounds like I was explaining it to you but was just agreeing.

She has been downgraded as the moderators (who see a wide range of work across schools, unlike teachers who only see their own classes) felt that her work was expected rather than exceeding. The moderators are going to be more accurate than an individual teacher. Moderators exist to ensure that the standards applied are fair and consistent across schools.

I doubt your daughter is the only one - if it's happened to others I doubt anyone would tell you?

If your daughter has got into grammar school, then she'll have passed her exam for that presumably and will have beaten off competition so that should reassure her.

I completely understand why you're worried though - you don't want her confidence knocked - I'd be the same.

But the moderation is for SATs writing levels. Not a moderation of school’s random levels.

Oh okay that changes things. The teacher called me to explain about her attainment levels not SATS scores - I have no idea what she got in SATS.

It is part of sats results though - all are set tests except writing which is teacher assessed. It's still part of sats results. But pp is right, slightly exceeding isn't a thing. There are set levels, expected and greater depth being the top two, the school can't add a middle option

That makes no sense.

She’s in Year 6. She will be given Y6 SATs levels. That was what was moderated.

The school can choose, in her report, to say she’s Gold with 14 stars. But the results of her SATs will say she is working at the Expected level in writing, as that is what the moderator has found.

But I haven’t even been given her SATS scores

So a 2 form entry school can receive up to 60 Subject Access Requests every year? You can't keep data on people and not tell them!

Worth mentioning here that schools are not moderated every year so the teacher may have been off with his judgements and not know for a few years until the school is randomly selected for a check. Writing assessment used to be ‘best fit’ but is now done by criteria checklist and for GDS the child has to meet every criteria over a number of pieces. As PP have said, it’s very hard to get. In our school we tend towards the conservative so when we were moderated this year several of our children were moved up. Some schools however, game the system and mark more leniently, in the knowledge that they won’t be moderated every year. We go to several schools and share our writing and moderate between us and the difference in judgements and quality is eye watering. And yet later in the year you see that a particular school got stellar results.

The teacher was phoning you to tell you her SATs score for writing had been moderated downwards.

but why would he call me to explain her sats results? I have no expectation for those, I didn’t even know we would get the scores. And also he said that her secondary school would NOT get these results that had been downgraded and would only get her sats scores so not to worry. Seems I best wait to see what comes home tomorrow. Thank you everyone for all of your time this evening.

Presumably he phoned you today because otherwise school would be finished and you'd be left wondering what on earth happened with her writing score and worrying that it might affect her grammar school place/setting. He was being proactive.

We’re talking year 6 here, not 6 yr olds. We all know it doesn’t really matter, except it does, when you’re the child concerned. The kids don’t wander through school with blinkers on. By year 6, they know where they are in the pecking order, for better or worse, and of course they don’t want to feel they’ve under-performed.

The grades are converted into a scaled score and used that way. "Expected" in writing is normally 103 with "Greater Depth" set to 113.

Progress 8 only uses English Reading score and Maths score.

Thank you. I know that must be the logical explanation and I’m totally with you.

But he said her secondary school won’t know this score and they will only see her SATS score which I’ll get tomorrow. It makes no difference to me or my daughter if her SATS score is downgraded, surely we would never have known. And we never had a score expectation either.

Will update tomorrow once I’ve got the report because now I’m totally confused as to why he called me.

He’s a great teacher, maybe just not that great at communicating this issue!

Sorry off topic, but I didn't realise that year 6 reports were moderated! I've been a bit annoyed at my son's teacher for giving him low attainment grades when he got 118, 118 and 111 in his sats. Didn't realise that this was a moderated report. Would have been nice if the school explained how the grades were given for his final report!

With those sats grades, my son got secure in most, developing in science and greater depth in reading. It was actually reading that he got 111 in his sats in!

This is true. They have so much peer pressure and when they’ve always been told
one thing, to suddenly be hit with something else, it’s going to hurt a little.

No, Year 6 teacher assessment of SATs writing is moderated.

Reports are not moderated, though most schools have checking procedures.

SATs tests (scores for Reading , Maths, Grammar) reflect a couple of hours of tests. Levels on reports represent the teacher’s judgements of work over the year. Sometimes the levels are the same. Sometimes they are different. Exactly hiw schools choose to give their own kevels is up to them, but they MUST report SATs results (and should send reports home 2 weeks before the end of term, iirc)

Then it's your job to reassure them that it doesn't mean a thing. Because it doesn't.