The difference between a 2a and level 3 at the end of year 2

[magdalene]

Hello
My DD has been predicted a 2a at the end of year 2. My question is how much difference is there between a 2a and level 3? Just wondering whether to encourage my DD to reach for level 3 or leave things as they are. I don't want to put her off (by pressuring her) but her teacher said a lot of it at this stage is due to her lack of confidence rather than ability. However the teacher would actually know more about these things than I do...

Actually starting to think this is a silly thread. A 2a is absolutely fine and my DD won't be pushed to go at a faster rate. Just get a bit sucked in by other mums from other schools comparing.

Don't push your child at this age, the KS1 sats are for the school's benefit and affect league tables and "value added" scores. They will have no effect on your DCs education.
Pushing her too hard may actually put her off school though, which will affect her education.
Concentrate on broadening her knowledge with exciting experiences, and she will draw on these in her school work.

A 3 means performing beyond the expected ability of a year 2 - whereas a 2a means at the top level of age appropriate. So a 2a is a perfectly good level to be performing at and what you should be wanting for her. If she is naturally way ahead of herself and actually a 3 when she is confident then fab, but a 2a is plenty good enough for now. As inmysparetime says, at ks1 the sats mean very little, it is only in late ks 2 and ks 3 when they matter for your child, rather than just the school records and data.

Don't worry - she's got another 9 yrs to go before gcse and that's when it actually counts. Many primary schools are also reluctant to give level 3s except in excptional cases as it lessens their key stage 2 value added scor. After all it's just the government having fun with figures isn't it. Make sure that she is happy and confident and she'll do better than if she was pushed.

Confidence-wise, I'm guessing she might feel better about herself if you don't push her? You can be very positive about a 2a, which is a great mark for the end of Yr2. Whereas, if she gets wind of the fact you are pushing her to aim higher, it might actually be counter-productive if she doesn't make it?

I'm thinking of a girl I know who is right on the margins between two ability groups at her school. The school kept her "down", so that she is at the top of her group. Her mum is amazed at how much her confidence, self-esteem and enthusiasm for school work have increased! She's pretty sure that being at the "bottom" of the group above would have had quite the opposite effect.

(That is assuming the children are aware of their levels - ours are, so it is necessary to have a pretty good idea how to react, whatever level they get!)

AChickenCalledKorma - re the children knowing their levels, have the teachers told them? I would be a bit annoyed if this information was shared with my own DD's, they have no idea what levels they are at. Surely telling them breeds a competitive/comparing/superiority culture in the playground? It's bad enough with reading levels!

Yes, the teachers seem to be quite open with the children about what level they are working at, and what they need to do to get to the next level. Also, we get detailed reports mid year and at the end of the year, which have their levels for the core subjects (reading, writing, maths, science). So any children who are allowed to see their reports will get to see what level they are on.

In terms of competitive culture in the playground, there's really not a lot of that in evidence. But to be honest, our school suffers somewhat from a couldn't-care-less attitude to education among a significant proportion of the parent body. Which may well be why the school is open about levels, to get the children to compete among themselves! Certainly, my daughter has two friends who are on a very similar level and they have a perfectly amicable competition going on between them about who can do best.

I should add that this is at KS2 - much more low key for the youngest children, although DD2 (in Yr2).

Interesting you say that, iamnot, dd came home from school today saying the teacher read out each child's nc grade and their target for the end of the year. I wasnt too happy about it, but thought I might be a little bit precious to complain.

They are in set, so I suppose everyone will have similar end of year grades and targets, but I was still a bit shocked.

X post with achicken. Maybe it's not that unusual then. I'll get off my high horse.

Chicken, sometimes I think the 'consolidation' argument or 'better to be confident and at the top of a lower group scenario' are platitudes trotted out when the teacher privately thinks a child isn't able enough for the higher group or doesn't want to put them in it for other reasons. I've heard it so many times. Not to say this might not be the right method for some and I do understand that self confidence is vitally important.

I have to say I've seen children who are not the necessarily the most confident (or perceived to be the most confident) thrive when placed with children who have slightly higher current attainment. I've seen these children get incrementally smarter as time goes on.

The tracking system in our school seems to play out that the child that starts ahead usually stays ahead so personally I would be aiming for a level 3. A 2A is a great achievement though at the end of KS1 as others have said.

There was a teacher on here yesterday who said she was asked to predict grades for her class at 11 at the end of reception which seems ridiculous to me even if a rough guide. I would be worried not least because it could lead to self-fulfilling prophecies being played out. We set for maths at the end of KS1 so for us a 2A might be a middle set rather than a top set scenario (depending on cohort). There will also be predictions about KS2 results by then.

Depends entirely on the school I'd imagine. Are the results used to stream or set etc?

I've been told there's quite a big difference between a secure level 3 (a 3b and above) and a 2a. Also, I think most schools expect the child in question to have been working at a secure level 3 for a considerable period of time (eg a term????) to award them a level 3. So, if lack of confidence is her main issue, I would try to avoid giving her the impression 2a isn't good enough (assuming she is aware of what she gets and what you were hoping for...).

ps I think a 3c is not, for school stats purposes, counted as a level 3.

Cortina I'm sure there is a risk of platitude. But I'm speaking from the experience of a mother who was initially disappointed that her daughter was in the "B" stream, but now thinks it was the best thing that ever happened to her. Just anecdotal, of course, but the OP mentioned her daughter's confidence, so it seemed a relevant observation.

Absolutely right, rabbit - a child has to be a 'secure 3' (round about a 3b though it can encompass the very top of 3c and the bottom of 3a) to be reported as a 3 by our school.

It's therefore quite a big jump, not a 'scrape over the boundary' thing to go from a 2a reported to a 3 reported.

That's great Chicken glad things have worked well.

rabbit and teacher - are you both talking about secured 3bs and 3as in ks1? Our school doesn't differentiate the 3s or the 1s for year2, only the 2s. They also only predicted at the beginning of the year and reported after the SATs. The rest of the year they use their own system of achievement.

Back to earlier in the thread on kids knowing their targets (Chicken, Iamnot, Aura etc) - in ks3 onward the kids are supposed to know their levels and their targets and be able to recite them on cue, especially if Ofsted come in. So perhaps they are being exposed to them early on to desensitise them. The kids I taught were totally blaze' about their levels, especially as they were in sets. So in year 9 top set everyone is a 6 or a 7, so whether you are a 7b or a 6c didn't seem to bother the kids.

These are really useful comments. I now know there is quite a marked difference between a level 2a and a level 3 so I will just look at the level 2a criteria and reinforce this with my DD. We are not pushy parents but like to help her at home as this gives her more confidence in the classroom. Her teacher kept saying how quiet and unconfident my daughter is and how this is holding her back. We encouarge her lots at home and give her plenty of time to relax, so there's no worry of burnout. She has no idea about levels but she does talk about things she can't do as opposed to things she can. My DD is at an extremely laid back school which in some ways is very nice but can have its drawbacks too. I just don't want her pigeon holed too much at this stage - there's still a long way to go, after all.

notpodd - I would be very surprised indeed if teachers in most schools were not differentiating the 3s and 1s, even if they only reported the results as 3s or 1s, particularly since I was told that they don't report a level 3c as a level 3. My assumption from what I have been told is that a 3c will be reported for SATs purposes as a 2a, but recorded for the school's records and planning as a 3c.

I was under the impression that in Year 2 SATS they make a child sit the Level 3 paper if they do well on the Level 2 paper, and you were awarded a Level 3 if you got a certain mark (quite a low pass mark- 11 out of 25, or something like that- if I remember correctly from the past paper I saw a couple of years ago). I didn't think the exam differentiated between the sublevels. Have I got this wrong?

SATs in KS1 are mainly teacher assessed, not exam-assessed. The exam is only used to back up the teacher's assessment. If the child performs slightly better or worse than the teacher thinks, this probably won't affect the teacher's assessment. If there's a huge discrepancy, then the teacher will get very worried and wonder what they've done wrong. Children already assessed by the teacher as being at a level 3 will not have to sit any level 2 papers, they will only sit level 3.

Oh, and I would have thought OFSTED inspectors would expect to see lots of evidence in a child's workbooks of a level 3 for a school to justify giving the child that level, rather than virtually no evidence in everyday schoolwork but an unusually good mark in a few papers on one or two days.

Also be aware that progress is the key thing that schools assess. So if at end of KS1 the child is a 3 then they will be expected to be a minimum of a 5 at the end of KS2 as all children must progress 2 levels by end of the next key stage.

There is a conflict therefore between infant schools which want levels to be as high as possible at end of KS1 and juniors who want them to be realistic and low so that progress over the junior school period can be properly assessed!

A school wouldn't look good if it's children's workbooks showed low quality work but the results in their SATs papers were excellent. It would look as though it had very poor understanding of its children's abilities and how to get the best out of them/had some weird exam-technique thing going on.

Aah, I see. Thanks.

We were always told dd would finish Y2 with a Level 3 in maths right up to 2 weeks before her sats. She got 2a in the sats and ended the year with 2a overall. I questioned it and something went wrong somewhere and was told they dont teach them L3 stuff and all are taught L2 so the only children achieving L3 would be getting it because they..., well not sure, they didnt really clarify this.