Going backwards measured by SAT levels - should I be asking why?

[MrAlbertoFrog]

Ds is in year 6 and has been in the 'top sets' of a large primary school for the last few years.
He has recently done a piece of assessed english work (involved continuing a story from a given paragraph) and was told he was working at a 3b level. He was very upset at this (as the whole class were talking about their levels and his was low compared to most of his friends) so we spoke to his teacher who insisted that he was 'where he is meant to be' and that he was expected to reach 4b by the end of the school year. This was pretty meaningless to me as I am/was not fluent in SAT levels but I looked at his end of year report for last year and he was assessed as '4b with his reading skills achieving higher than this'.

So, should I be asking school why he has gone backwards? Is this a normal occurrence due to teachers marking work differently?

That's true, Indigo and Mrz, and I think that I probably agree with you.

I was more musing on a post above that 'I don't think anyone would expect children with SEN to meet those expectations' as I think that the picture is more complex than that.

It is complex because children are complex and there are a huge range of obstacles to overcome once /if they have been identified but I don't think we should have lower expectations for children with SEN or why should they bother to come to school if the teacher has already written them off...

:)

It's really easy for SEN to be a circular argument.

A child isn't making progress so they're put on the SEN register.

Then being on the SEN register is given as the reason why they don't make progress.

I certainly don't have lower expectations of them personally (certainly not lower expectations of PROGRESS, though occasionally modified expectations of absolute attainment - I'm thinking of my pupil with MLD due to brain damage here, for example) BUT I sometimes wonder whether 'the system' encourages a focus on those children who CAN reach the 'magic' level of national expectations and doesn't celebrate the huge progress made by some of those who won't make that level...

I suppose what I'm saying is that progress is a valid measure, and something to be celebrated alongside attainment.

Indigo, I absolutely agree with you that progress is the key thing - it is a source of pride to me in a professional capacity that my children with SEN are making MORE progress than the other children in my class. However, some of them will not achieve the 'magic' arbitrary attainment level for their age descpite making exceptional progress...

If they're making good progress for you, but not reaching national expectations - then they must have not made good progress for some of their previous teachers.

if you can teach them - why couldn't their previous teachers?

Something is going wrong somewhere.

IB

Without going into details - other scenarios are possible:

• May have started from an extremely low baseline due to medical or other factors (I return to my child with MLD and brain damage as an example of this)

• May have started school very late or have very intermittent attendace patterns.

• May only recently have had full diagnosis of the reasons behind previous lack of progress which have then led to targeted interventions that really help.

• May only recently have been given support in, or removed from, home scenarios which were at the very least not condusive to learning....

I've got a child who has made a year and a half progress since July whereas she made half a year progress in the previous two years ... yes something is going wrong somewhere.

I'm not denying that poor teaching (in other schools or in mine) / well-meaning but not sufficiently targeted interventions (sometimes due to the length of time a diagnosis takes) / a 'wait and see' mentality towards some children 'on the borderline' don't play a part in some cases too..... just that there is often no 'sinister' reason for a child's low level of attainment coupled with a good rate of current progress.

?Continuing a story? is usually the stage that shows clearly the gap in children?s writing ability. This is unlikely to be a ?one off? situation. Ask the school how your child can improve in this area. They should be able to offer some tips and ideas. Ask them to write down their ideas.