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.

I tutor children from 10 different primary schools. It amazes me how many children are awarded 'Greater Depth' by their school that simply wouldn't be GD in our school. Likewise, children awarded 'Meeting Expectations' who couldn't actually be further from 'Meeting Expectations' if they tried. This is precisely why moderation is needed. Yes, 7 sets of teachers can be wrong.

Her secondary school was probably sent her original scores before the moderation was done. Hence him saying they won't see the new score.

Moderation is about checking the teacher, not the child, so I doubt anyone's going to run up the road to the secondary school clutching her new grade and yelling STOP! IT'S CHANGED!

We all know it doesn’t really matter, except it does, when you’re the child concerned.

Very much this. My very conscientious eldest would have been really upset if this had happened to her. So good luck intercepting it. And of she does find out, her teacher contacted you to say there'd been an error and told you what he thinks her grade should be

Your child will be fine. What might cause problems is if you make a big deal of individual judgements like this, to your child.

Yes, my child would have wanted to read their own report, for sure. Not a problem I don’t think.

But the message to convey is, this doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. The balance of evidence is you’re doing fine and even if this grade was accurate, which it might not be, it is not the end of the world and …. hey look, let’s go and do some fun stuff now.

Not every judgement or assessment is fair or accurate. Valuable life skills, recognizing and dealing with that.

Kids need to know they are more than a number or grade, and have intrinsic worth. And that other people can get it wrong, or not rate them while others do, and that’s totally ok.

OP, I'm a Y6 teacher with moderation experience. I see someone has already linked to the Exemplification documents and Writing standards; have a look through these https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/2018-teacher-assessment-exemplification-ks2-english-writing
paying particular attention to 'Frankie's writing as they are samples assessed as Greater Depth. It shows really clearly the standards which need to be present consistently across a range of genre in order for an assessment of Greater Depth to be awarded.

It sounds to me as if your daughter's school operates a quirky 'in-house' system of alternative grades, which may have muddled her class teacher's judgement. There are only ever three grades possible, the standards are stringent and applied consistently to a randomised sample of pupils in schools across the country.

The moderation process is collaborative and very much a professional dialogue between the moderators and the class teacher: you sit down togerher with the children's books or writing folders and the standards for Writing and literally talk through each piece together, almost forensically, all the while referencing evidence for each required standard.

If the teacher's assessment of your daughter's grade was questioned and re-moderation occurred, he would have had the opportunity to submit additional pieces of your daughter's writing which would have allowed him to evidence her capacity for meeting the standard. He would have known precisely what was required as this would have been discussed in depth during the moderation meeting, and he would have had to put forward a strong case that he could in fact produce additional samples of writing which would meet the missing standards in order for re-moderation to be considered.

Ok I didn’t realise that, nor did he explain, but that would make sense. If only he had made it clear he was talking about sats grades and not the ‘made up’ grades the school give out 3 times a year. Thank you

I’d be worried about my DD if she spent more than 5 minutes worrying about this. And yes, my DD is in a grammar and does exceed at most subjects but not all subjects because we can’t all be good at everything. Teach your DD resilience.

Either way it doesn’t matter. Entry to grammar school depends entirely on performance on the selection test. It’s nothing to do with SATs or internal school assessments.

Thank you. Honestly I thought the teacher was talking about the school in house grades not the sats because he said don’t worry the secondary school won’t see these they will only see her sats scores, which I still don’t have, nor had I asked for. He did also use the word ‘exceeding’ so again confusing.

I have no question over her sats scores whatever they may be and of course wouldn’t question the sats moderator assessment of her work.

I was unhappy because of the - what I know see as made up - school grade that she had always been consistent with, suddenly changing.

Thank you for your help!

Just have every entry anonymous 🤷‍♀️

The results mean nothing to the students, they aren't used for secondary etc...

Fair point.

I just think there's got to be a better way to do this

I agree with a PP at the top of this page; teacher assessments across schools vary wildly. GD is a rare achievement and the expected standard is exactly that, expected. Many, many children's writing does not meet this 'expected standard' either, despite the child seemingly being a decent writer. You can be at the same 'Working Toward the Expected Standard' as a writer whose writing narrowly misses one or two criteria for Y6 Expected Standard, or as a Y6 writer whose writing would not look out of place in the book of a Year 3 pupil in September.

Good practice in primary schools includes periodic moderation of Writing across year groups, or partnering up with other schools a couple of times a year to get 'fresh eyes' on your pupil's writing and keep the dialogue between colleagues current and constructive.

Many schools or clusters of schools also have a member of staff who has done moderator training, as that’s also a really useful way to understand the way that the standards are implemented .

It’s not "down two levels". As someone has already told you, there are only three possible levels in KS2 SATS: below the standard they think children of that age should achieve ('working towards'); at that level ('Expected'); or above that level ('Greater Depth').

Schools are moderated every few years, to try to keep the teacher judgements consistent between schools. There is a list of criteria that have to be met for a child to be deemed to be working at Expected or Greater Depth. That your daughter's work has been downgraded could be because of something as simple as the teacher not having given her the opportunity to demonstrate her writing skills in enough different writing genres.

I really wouldn’t worry about it. It’s likely that her secondary school will make their own judgements.

It's all completely irrelevant.

That does happen to children though. They don’t always make progress in a linear fashion. So can drop in & out of above / expected / below. There is a new curriculum each year.

You’re thinking about this the wrong way. She hasn’t been ‘downgraded’ at all. It means that her teachers were inflating her attainment when her writing was moderated.
Moderation in Y6 is carried out by LA advisors. The children are selected at random and all their written work throughout the school year is looked at. It is assessed against a matrix which class teachers can also use for Teacher assessment. So yes, if the advisors assessed a child whom the class teachers said was working at a higher level that they agreed, others in that class will also be checked.
How the other children have done is completely irrelevant to anyone but them.

There isn't a 'writing SATS' though...writing is teacher assessed against a (strict!) set of criteria. In Year 6, only writing is externally moderated (to ensure that the criteria is being applied correctly).

In Year 2 it was always all 3 subjects, writing, maths and reading
that were externally moderated. Now though, Year 2 is no longer moderated, because the Year 2 SATS have been cancelled and there is no longer a need to submit Year 2 data to the government.

Ou of interest, how do secondary schools know new year 7's sats results? how do primary schools share them?

Thank god we’re in Wales where all of this nonsense has gone.
All our Yr 6 pupils are looking forward to summer and starting in their new schools, as it should be, and like it was for me in the 1970s.

None.Of.This.Crap.Matters.

As I understand it secondary school re test as they get fed up with overstated levels from junior school and it makes it hard for them to prove progress.
So secondary school will immediately do their own tests anyway.

She won't be upset unless you are. You will make her anxious over scores and results if you carry on like this. It does not matter. It won't make one jot of difference to her future. Build resilience in your child it's far more valuable than a test result.

100% agree

Stop agonising over it, stop analysing it. Stop emailing people. Enjoy your summer.

Is it rare to get greater depth for writing in Y6? 25 kids did in our y6 cohort this year (year group of 180)

No they give it to the child in an envelope with the parents name on You don't even need to discuss it. Say you did very well and move on with your day for goodness sake. And please do not go on mission to get everyone else's kid downgraded 🙄