Performance targets

[Booer1]

My son is in KS1 (year 2) and his primary school have started displaying on a class room board all children's current performance targets by listing the children by name under each numeric target number. THis means that all children are aware of their own performance in English and Maths and that of all their contemporaries and how they are achieving relative to their friends. When I registered concern about this process "labelling" children at a young age as "good" or "bad" at English and Maths I was told it was "motivational" for children. What are other people's views on this?

I think this is awful. It's fine having targets, but children shouldn't be comparing themselves to others at this age. I imagine it's probably quite demotivating for those at the bottom of the ladder. And may generate complacency among those at the top. Bad idea imo!

Absolutely appalling practice. Y2 do not need to know numerical targets/performance.

I agree its good for the children doing well but really knocks the less able. However, OFSTED love it and it is seen as outstanding practice so the school are meerly doing what is expected of them.

I disagree -they may approve of this happening in year 6, but I've yet to see a report praising the use of sharing numerical targets with y2, thankfully.

Last Yr in Yr2 my dd's literacy target was to use more exciting vocabulary in her writing.

Now knowing my dd as I do, I knew she was more than capable of this as she has been a free reader since Reception and so has been exposed to a great variety of text and vocabulary which she was applying to her homework - I have higher expectations from her than her teachers appear to.

However, by April this target apparently had not been reached at school. On questioning dd why she had not completed a target that she had been doing at home since Yr1 she replied that "They'll only give me another target".

Target setting is just a box ticking exercise for Ofsted - my cynical dd of 8 y o knows this and is not impressed!

Thank you so much to all the contributors to this. I am booked to discuss this with the Head of the school tomorrow and I feel much more confident to do so now. The other point I have been searching the internet for is whether the publication of our children's performance targets without any parental consent at all is a breach of the school's obligations of confidentiality to parents and children and/or a breach of data protection principles? It is parents' evening this week and with the boards in place, all parents will see the performance targets of other children in the class. Any views?!

Unacceptable, targets should be between teacher, child and parent. I have posted before on a similar thread.

Annbenoli - could you provide a link, please?

Slightly different but we were told we must not have our EYFSP assessments grids (which we had on a stock cupboard wall so that staff could update points when obs)anywhere that parents might see other children's achievement as it was a breach of confidentiality (by an Ofsted inspector)

Ah, is it really considered good practice in year 6? It was done in the run-up to KS2 Sats in DD1's year - DD insisted that everyone was very positive about it and that all the children were encouraging each other, but a friend whose son wasn't doing quite as well as DD was rather less convinced.

I must find out if they're planning to do it again this year - I thought it might have been an idiosyncrasy of the teacher, who's now left.

I think it's awful practice in KS1, by the way.

OMG! When I think of some of the poor little mites who try so hard in my class, and make slow, slow progress - it would be so demoralising for them. By this age they would be aware that they were on the bottom of the table.

(Then there are those able children, who find everything easy, don't have to try, are certain L3s and couldn't give a toss, who would be sparkling up at the top of the chart!)

So the teachers out there (inc Mr z) the display of this material without parental consent is presumably is not a Ofsted approved approach?

I certainly don't display anything.
Children's individual targets are in the front cover of their exercise books and are of the nature I need to remember capital letters after a full stop or I need to remember pairs of numbers that total ...

My yr 5/6's also have their targets in their books-although they DO know the level they are working at and what they need to do to aim for the next level up. However ( although children this age can pretty much "sort" the class into ability levels on their own) I would NEVER publish levels in this way and certainly not for younger children and can't see the purpose. As far as I am aware, OFSTED expect children to know their targets ( or at least where to find them!) not that they are on public display!

It's considered good practice but I hate it and have until now managed to resist 'encouragment'.

OK, so when my DD's year 6 class came into the room in the weeks before SATs and saw their current NC levels displayed on the interactive whiteboard, that wasn't necessarily a good thing?

Goingspare! AFAIK no info is displayed in DDs classrooms apart from which colour/shape group they are in for literacy and numeracy. I questioned DD1 (yr5) recently , just out of curiosity, if she knew what level she was working at and what her targets were for literacy - she looked blank , and then offered that "I can use level 5 punctuation and connectives in my writing" or something - so this is all she and I know.

DD2 in yr2 is blissfully unaware, as it should be, and her teacher at parents evening would not tell us what levels she was at - apart from to say that she was "On target" . DD2 did say yesterday that she uses sem-colons in her writing (!) but I don't know whether she has targets to work to like DD1. So to summarise, because I'm waffling - stunned by Booer1's school.

.. should have said I don't know whether she knows that she has targets to work to.