A guide to national curriculum levels

[learnandsay]

www.stjohn.bucks.sch.uk/Newsletters/Newsletters/A%20guide%20to%20national%20curriculum%20levels%202009.pdf

I'm not sure that the term 'coasting school' has any meaning.

However there is an awful lot of stats published on the dcsf league tables which tell you lots.

for example it tells you how low attainers, middle attainers and high attainers do.

It also gives you the CVA for the school.

From what you describe I would expect the high attainers to be doing badly and the CVA to be well below 100.

If those are true then it sounds like there's a problem.

If those aren't true, then either the school is very good at manipulating figures, or what you think is happening isn't actually happening.....

If the class doesn't make expected progress, then the teacher will be in trouble.

BlueElephant because your son's teacher is a fool

My friend is a governor and has a ds in year 7 at a local school. They had them all year 7 tested in the first half term and a lot of the L5 became L4 & L3, apparently they the school is very critical of the primary feeders. Does anyone know why this could happen? Thank you.

Past, I suspect that there is something wrong if the school is actively using older children as substitute TAs. Children reading in groups for some activities is one thing. I heard someone else saying that their child was paired up with an older child for reading on occasions. But that recently the meetings seemed to have stopped. In the future when my daughter is an older pupil I will not be happy if she gets used to teach other children to read. She will be going to school to learn herself, not to teach. That's the job of the teachers. The time she spends teaching children to read she could have spent learning a foreign language or doing some more complicated maths, or studying for her 11+. Ofstead do put in their reports mentions of schools failing to stretch their most able pupils. Our catchment area school has such a mention. I believe it's one of the things that it intends to work on. (But there's been no mention of pupils teaching each other!)

Really Mrz :) I haven't noticed. I spoke to the head about it and she told me that the teacher and the school are very keen to see a 100% Maths as they have never had it before and they are sure that my ds will have it.

learnandsay: the same here my ds is teaching some children in his class and few from year3.

BlueElephant - this happens every year, but it's only when they change school it becomes a problem.

Reasons why it happens include:

• Cognitive bias - ie after working with a child for a year the teacher knows they've made progress and marks them higher than they did at the beginning of the year.

• Regression over summer - some children forget how to do stuff after 6 weeks of holidays.

• Different tests - if you give children different tests you will give different results

• Political reasons - it's to the teacher's advantage to give high grades in July- and low grades in Sep

• Inexact science - two teachers won't give the same work the same grade

• Not enough evidence - after one piece of work you don't have enough evidence to give a higher grade

• Expectations - kids live up and down to them

And loads of other reasons.

Anyone who would say that to a child hasn't got the right attitude. A teacher is there for the child not the other way around.
I would be less than impressed by the head's response if it were my child

learnandsay - older children have helped my DD with her reading - and it has been beneficial to both of them.

My DS regularly helps a boy in his class who should have a statement but doesn't. Again it has helped my DS enormously.

I'm very glad my kids have had these experiences.

One of the best ways to reinforce a skill or knowledge is to teach it to someone else.
If the process is detrimental to either child is isn't appropriate.

How is teaching a younger child to read beneficial for the older child? And even if it is beneficial wouldn't spending the time on 11+ practice be more beneficial? I know which I'd want my daughter to be doing. Sometimes life is about choices.

The process of teaching and explaining gives a deeper understanding of the process

mrz, I can see how that might be true with maths proper, (rather than arithmetic,) Latin, or grammar, where applying rules consistently creates the skill. But I'd have imagined that once an older child can read well the marginal improvement that she will get from teaching a struggling reader won't do her reading much good.

I'm sure it depends on the age of the children involved. If the older child is still learning to read herself then of course she might benefit. It's true. But I'm assuming the child is much older, say 10 or 11 and can already read very well indeed.

They gain confidence from being a mentor to the younger child.

They gain social skills and empathy.

They improve speaking and listening skills.

They learn responsibility.

It helps with reading comprehension

Thanks Indigo - data for 2010 SATs on CVA was withheld - so I'm afraid I can't judge.

Previous years around 99 or 100 CVA scores. So I guess not desperately bad - unfortunately very difficult as a parent to disentangle whether down-weighting of SATs scores at KS1 (general belief children are encouraged to all score NC L2 rather than NC L3 - so school looks to be performing well at Y6) is generally believed to be going on. Just very hard to know if this is unfair school ground gossip or real.

OFSTED inspection did record that children arrive at school at above average EYFS levels and that this is built on in KS1 but not maintained in KS2.

Doesn't that depend on the extent to which the older child explains the younger child's mistakes? If the older child simply helps the younger one read the specific words that she's struggling with then surely comprehension isn't much of an issue. (We're assuming that the older child already knows what the word in question means.)

No we are assuming the older child understands a text aimed at a much younger age group ... if they don't then they will benefit from working through it.

learnandsay we use year 6s to read with year 1s, but it happens during ks2 lunchtime (ks1 are earlier due to space constraints) and entirely voluntary. Our year 1s benefit by having an additional reading session that they wouldn't otherwise have due to staffing (like most schools there is one ta and one teacher for the class who have to do guided reading with 30 children each week). The year 6s love the responsibility and being able to help somebody, and I think these are very good values to have. It certainly isn't detrimental in anyway to them, and if they don't want to do it they can choose to stop.

We are a little bit selective and only choose those who are competent readers themselves. They listen to a child, correct any mistakes and ask a few simple questions. It isnt that different to what happens at home when parents listen to them read. It certainly isn't the main way of teaching reading, just a nice additional extra.

Hi learnandsay

without going into huge detail this DC went on to score L6 in Y6 last year. They had to be forcibly dragged to school.

Would finish all work ahead of others and have to wait patiently or assist. Spent nearly all maths lessons 'helping' lower groups to work with multiplicaiton/ division/ fractions/ etc... - all stuff they'd mastered years before.

According to his Mum this DC would race home and spend their evenings on on-line algebra work.

Family rowing got worse and worse as the year progressed - because the DC was absolutely fed up with just being bored all day in school.

This is an extreme example of what is going on - most children are not so far ahead - but is part of a spectrum of problems whereby they sort of teach to the median, and those struggling or those high flyers are just kind of left to it.

A voluntary system during lunch break I'd approve of my daughter taking part in.

Is it the same as what happens at home? It will depend on the home. I'm actively teaching my daughter to read, ie how to approach the tackling of new words that she hasn't seen before. I'd imagine that an eleven year old would simply tell a struggling five year old what the word says.

What did you think of that letter from school learnandsay?

Past, I'd say that was the school's problem. Heaven forbid, if that happens to my daughter, that she gets so far ahead that she has nothing to do in school all day then I'll consider taking her out of school altogether. I'd discuss it with the school, obviously. But if the head convinced me that she couldn't supply an advanced child with anything useful to learn what other option would I have? But I'd write to the governors first asking for an explanation as to why the head couldn't find anything for my daughter to learn. I wouldn't agree with her teaching other children because nobody had anything else for her to do. That's not what children go to school for. They go to learn.