Criteria for children to 'achieve above Gov expectations'

[Behindthefacade]

Please could teachers tell me the criteria for how teachers determine whether or not a child is 'achieiving above Gov expectations'? Assessment of whether a child is achieving above Gov expectations is unclear to me as parent who isn't a teacher. This thread is not 'pushy parents wanting their child to have As in every subject'. That's unrealistic and not true picture for most kids plus I thought teacher had been generous in one subject. We told DD we are proud of her achievements. What we didn't speak about is that DDs grades are lower in many subjects than previous years suggesting there's room for improvement and there's no comments for subjects DD has dropped a grade so no indication of the reason for this. On the surface, it looks like a glowing report but it's unclear where improvement is required and how this can be achieved. Our DD also noticed her PE grade did not reflect her efforts at school as she is involved in all sports and says she listens carefully to the teacher and does as asked. She's v.good at swimming, gymastics, football, netball and tennis and competes outside of school but what does a child have to do to show they've gone 'above Gov expectations'. My husband and I are now wondering if the school really is encouraging our child to reach her full potential. There were a number of spelling and grammar errors and sentences that didn't make sense on the report including our 5 letter surname so DD went through it and corrected them with a different colour pen as she was asked check work and do this in class so she must have learnt something. I know I should discuss this with the teacher but it's now end of term, difficult to get time with the teacher and I'm not disputing the grades given, I'm trying to establish what criteria is used. Please could teachers or experienced support staff help?

A lot of schools just put ‘expected standard’ even when they’re above. Dd just got 118/ 120 in her English SATs in Y6 and the school still put ‘expected standard’.

There are a few teachers at my children's school who say they never give an 'above expectations'. My eldest was 4yrs ahead in maths according to national standardised testing and still got a 'meets expectations' or C. I assume because the assessments aren't trying to see past the expected level in the slightest. It is hard to not feel like an elitist tiger parent at parent teacher interviews when trying to ask about the child's true potential.

I’m presuming this is a primary school as secondaries don’t use the age-related expectations (they mostly either give gcse grades or rate against the child’s individual targets).

primary schools vary massively in how they decide if a child is “greater depth” or exceeding expectations compared to at age related expectations.

the exception is year 6 where you will get sats results which are scaled scores.

some primaries use optional sats papers for each year and report on those results. Others use performance in the classroom. In both cases it’s generally down to teacher judgement/the policy of the school as to whether exceeding/greater depth is given.

the phonics test result (year 1) should have let you know if there were any problems learning phonics.

some schools have put together information on (rough) age related expectations for example this

https://www.benjamin.lancsngfl.ac.uk/page/age-related-expectations-for-each-year-group/149145

there is no guidance (as far as I am aware) on exceeding

A lot of schools just put ‘expected standard’ even when they’re above. Dd just got 118/ 120 in her English SATs in Y6 and the school still put ‘expected standard’.

Yes school report was expected for teachers bit but she got greater depth in 3 SATS. I think it's normal to do that tbh.

I think it varies. I’ve seen people posting their actual reports with scores on Facebook with lower scores than dd and the teacher has written ‘greater depth’

This is helpful thank you

The problem is that there isn’t really any detailed published criteria or a tick list. It’s down to the teachers judgement and therefore can be subjective.
it’s fairly meaningless at primary until they’re in Y6 so I wouldn’t get to hung up on it.

Teacher assessment should be based on the child's work in class and will have been decided before SATs results came out; it definitely shouldn't be changed to reflect them.

@Melancholyflower the teacher assessed her at ‘greater depth’ for writing but put ‘expected standard’ next to all her scales scores from SATs which were near to full
marks. That doesn’t make sense.

Depends upon whether we're talking about Primary or Secondary or whether we're talking about KS3 or KS4 end of year reports.

Primary - set by the DfE based upon the level she was assessed at in KS1. Obvious limitations include teaching to the SATs and primaries desperate to show progress.

Secondary Y10 - bad idea to say above expectations in case they decide they don't have to step it up for Y11 - and a very high grade can be counterproductive due to perceived pressure to be anything less than perfect, as well as making it impossible to go above expectations.

KS3 - it's not standardised and kids can have varying degrees of ability and progress; being good at sports outside school doesn't translate to demonstrating above expected progress at completely different activities in school and being good at drawing peppers and pomegranates in Art doesn't mean being good at portraiture in oil pastels with a different teacher.

Well in her SATs she achieved expected standard ( the results from the DFE only state achieved or not, with no category of greater depth/exceeding), so that’s all the school can say, but I thought you were talking about teacher assessment in her report.

Sorry, my last post was in reply to this.

My sons teacher said even if he bombed his SATs he was greater depth for everything. They assess them before SATs. He got 120 in English 119 Reading and 113 Maths. I was relieved because i think they use SATs results at Senior School. They also should test them at senior school for sets as far as im aware.

SATs 100 is scaled as achieved and 110 as Greater depth i think. But it's a government test for the school not the children so the school just had to say how many achieved- so often schools have achieved written next to scores over 100- doesbt matter if greater depth. Then on reports which take the child's actual work during year into account, it may say Greater depth. But if this was expected it can also say expected level- slightly confusing!
Often teachers lower in school dont put Greater depth as this puts pressure on the next teacher to maintain or explain even if child then plateaus.