Problem with Year 6 Level 6 writing test - help

[BizzyLizzy70]

DD devastated with not getting Level 6 in English. Her teacher took me aside and said that she personally had marked her internal assessments and she should have a 6. She got a high 5 (?) in the external reading paper. Somehow the Head decided she should get two 5's. Her teacher said we should ask for the Head for the raw scores. I've searched in vain on the net to make sense of this on the internet. Her teacher is very professional but knows much more than the Head about Year 6 assessment and must feel strongly that the Head has over-ridden her on this to have discussed it with me. I need to know what I'm talking about, as I believe there is a formula for the internal writing assessment. Any one out there to help????

Don'tEatTheVolesKids: er, yes, I am in fact a journalist. With two English degrees, one of them from Oxford. I can supply you with (a) links to stuff I've written for national publications (b) the rather sad evidence of my yearly earnings. I rest my case . I need my lovely Inferiorettes to get Proper Jobs to compensate for maternal fecklessness. Perhaps your list would be more useful for them, as clearly I am beyond the pale not least because I will be 50 next year and most of the things on my To Do list involve writing rather than earning money.

Good writing skills essential: Research of any kind (this ends up being a vast category & covers any field of study, including the most mathematical & scientific), teaching, law, social work, advertising, publishing & editing, campaigning, politics, webpage & content construction, archivists, middle & higher levels of management in any large business, large institution and local government admin.

There is, or perhaps was, a brickie who writes articles for the Telegraph. So even builders don't escape the value of good writing. Childcarers have to keep lots of written records & up to date written policies: just loads of occupations where good writing is very helpful if not essential.

I feel the same about maths, by the way, no idea how people get a "good" job without good numeracy skills.

Agree that people (kids) can be excellent writers without meeting highest NC guidelines, though.

Ds ( and the criteria) caused huge frustration to his year 6 teacher because his writing is fantastic, but his complete inability to use capital letters appropriately when in full creative flow ( I have asked for help on this on another thread- hint hint) means that he couldn't fully meet the NC requirements for a level 6. Not sure how I feel about this- 99.9% of me thinks that of course you can't give a level 6 to someone who is capable of writing a two line note to his sister which no capital letters and your for you're, but the hippyish .1% reckons that content is all......

Read your other thread, seeker, and the way I would look at it is this:

Of course, it's important that you help him find ways to be consistent with, eg capital letters and that he stops making silly errors; but just think: when he can and does, he will skip up the next level quite quickly because he has all the content already there, good ideas and complex sentence structures etc.

He should make really good progress at secondary AND whilst it's still crucial that he makes these improvements for English, the fact that he has it all going on content wise means that he will do really well in other 'writing' subjects like History and RS, etc.

My ds has fantastic ideas, sentence structure, grammar and never makes punctuation mistakes (the odd spelling mistake) but his writing used to be so slow (slightly Aspie perfectionism going on). His speed/quantity has massively improved this year and so he has skipped straight from a level 3 to a level 5. I think he'll continue to progress well in English and I'm sure your ds will too!

Handmaidtail AKA mother darling - I got a 7 in reading, and a 6 in comprehension and another 7 in speaking and listening. But in the end of all paper I got five marks away from a 7, and so that downgraded my work to two 6s and two 7s, and in this case they always take the lower mark at my school. That's what Mrs Viggers (my teacher) told me...