Should teachers set 'goals' for individual children?

[Cortina]

At each parents evening (for one of mine) we get a piece of paper that lists strengths, areas that need to be developed, and in 10 mins or so a parent and teacher mutually agree what the 'goals' are going forward.

I think it's a great idea and after coming away from DC's parents evening (at another school) with only a VERY vague idea of how they are doing I couldn't help wondering how this system might universally improve things?

everyone has dont that for about TEN years iME

The problem I have with AfL is with my lower ability groups in years 7 and 8 where some pupils can barely read! Therefore my comments are not meaningful because they can't read them! Whereas they would understand "Good", so long as I wrote it in print!

For higher sets I think it is useful but I think there is a tendency to overuse it and then pupils can get lazy about reading and reflecting on the comments.

Target setting has been around for years. I remember about 14 years ago, I led some INSET on putting targets into 'pupil speak' so that they understood what the teachers were telling them to do.

AFl has also been around for several years and at its most basic involves giving pupils agreed success criteria before completing a piece of work. They can then use this success criteria to assess their peers' work or their own work and also understand the teacher when he/she says that the pupil succeeded in x, y and z but now needs to focus on a, b or c to reach the next level.

In English at secondary we also have APP (this is also now in primaries and in secondary Maths, with Science and ICT coming soon I think). This again, gives a very structured way of assessing pupils diagnostically and then sharing findings with them and/or their parents.

The target setting type interviews you describe in the OP have also been in lots of schools for quite a number of years: I think we started them in 2000 iirc.

Even though I do agree that all the setting of individual goals and assessing work that so that children know exactly what to do to improve it is a good thing, sometimes when I look at DSs homework (year 8) it would be nice once in a while to just get a big tick and 'well done 10/10' on it like "in the old days"