KS2 Year 5, Level 4b & 3C??

[Leaveitbabe]

Forgive me if this has been answered but I cannot get a clear answer via google. DOE pointed me here:

www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/assessment/keystage2/pupil/b00206193/ks2-results/level-threshold-tables

DD is Y5 and achieved
3C in handwriting this sounds low even though she has a glowing report for her handwriting i.e. very neat etc.
4b in Literacy and Mathematics

What do these scores mean?

Many thanks in advance.

why the confusion about the words "average" and "expected"? 80%ish get the expected, so the NC expected levels have nothing to do with where the average is.

They are a cut off for the bottom 20%.

Sorry OP & other posters:

I fear I picked up the term 'average' from the Mumsnet learning page " The number of sublevels an 'average' child might make is..." and their grid at bottom of page - link here: www.mumsnet.com/learning/assessment/progress-through-national-curriculum-levels

As usual language and meaning are at the root of this interesting and sometimes heated discussion.

I think Mumsnet learning (but maybe someone from Pearson can come on about this) mean 'typical' - and I wasn't specifically thinking through anything statistically myself.

I suspect that this is about the 'median' on the Bell Curve. An example with IQ is discussed on this QUB website: meds.queensu.ca/courses/assets/modules/types-of-data/symmetrical_and_asymmetrical_data.html

So what they're talking about is the 50th percentile child at the peak of the Bell curve (persuming normal distribution = symmetrical curve) - and that has been taken to be the notional 'average' (meaning here typical) pupil. And from the point of view of explaining expectation that's statistically reasonable - so I'm presuming 4a (from Pearson) would represent the peak of the curve with approximately 48%-49% doing slightly worse and 48%-49% doing slightly better.

I don't know - but someone out there may know whether KS1 and KS2 SATs results are distrubted normally (symmetrically) or not.
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Now teachers please do correct me if I'm getting this wrong or have wild notions but:

1. 2 sub-levels a year progress tends to work as a rule of thumb from my experience. Typically no sublevels reported in YR because EYFS scoring, and therefore Year 1 you get first NC Levels & sub-levels (if reported to you by your school). These usually are in the NC Level 1 range for most children.

From there on it seems to make sense with levels working c to b to a then up to next main level (e.g. 1c - 1b - 1a then 2c, etc...) then at the end of each year progress would look like:

YR 1 - let's say a 1c/1b
YR 2 - let's say a 2c (2 sub-levels & level 2 for SATs)
YR 3 - 2a
YR 4 - 3b
YR 5 - 4c
YR 6 - 4a

2. The general expectation is for schools to get the vast majority of pupils to Level 4 or better.

3. The tracking of 2 sub-levels a year is about tracking progress (at least for me). If there is good communication between teachers and myself, I'm able to understand that DDs are improving and mastering what they're taught or if they aren't progressing through an early warning that they're struggling/ stalling in some areas.

It's useful for me at home, where I do a lot to support my DDs, and hopefully also useful to track at school. (I can't speak for all schools, but our school does track 2 sub-levels progress per year for all pupils in KS2).

HTH

Pastsellbydate, someone who understands statistics!

For progressing through the levels, two levels are expected each key stage, so in KS 1 that's one whole level in Y1 and another in Y2. In KS2 it's one whole level every 2 years. So if you left Y2 on 2b, by end of y4 you should get 3b and by end of y6, 4b. And these are expected levels, as you say, not median. Looking at seekers stats, median would look to be 4a ish at the end of Y6.

PastSellByDate - they have to be normally distributed across the population.

The only way they couldn't be would be if there was abnormal interference in the education system e.g. if all teachers brought a child to a basic level and promptly suspended that child's education to focus on the others until they also reached that level. Or some other inappropriate policy.

Parents of children at the two tails often grumble that their child is not getting the education they would most benefit from, but there would be uproar if this kind of engineering really did take place.

I am not sure if someone has already posted this link but it explains how to interpret the levels better than anything else i've seen before:-
www.devon.gov.uk/fostering-national-curriculum-levels.pdf

That is super helpful @anice.