Last teacher levelled their class way too high

[spreston]

Hi
Child has just entered Y3 and my OH met with their new teacher yesterday after school. Our child had level 3s across the board at the end of Y2 and we were led to believe that this was very good, above expectation.

New teacher has said that the Y2 teacher overinflated the levels last year and out of the 12 children that got level 3s only 2 actually deserved them. So we are told that our child may not make the expected 2 sub levels progress this year due to a slump in Y3 and because she is actually only a 2a in reading, 2b in writing and 2b in maths.

Is there anything that we can do? And how can this go unnoticed?
It is a good school in London, received outstanding at last oftsted but seems to have a lot of new, young and inexperienced teachers. May explain why the levelling was all wrong last year...

I have found it interesting reading all the opinions on this thread. However friends (also parents of Y3 children in the school) and I just think the discrepancy is simply due to the inexperince of the Y2 teacher combined with the failing of the KS1 leader to moderate the end of year levels. The Y2 teacher is relatively new to teaching and has had quite a bit if time off in the last year. She had missed some local authority courses run for Y2 to help them level the children. The KS1 leader has also just gone on maternity leave so is unavailble and unaccountable.

We are all OK with the issue and can see that the level 3s given were too optimistic given that our children still need to work on many of the aspects of level 2 writing in order to develop.

My understanding is that there was no external moderation offered this year. I don't think it happens every year round here....

There is no league table reward

We are all OK with the issue and can see that the level 3s given were too optimistic given that our children still need to work on many of the aspects of level 2 writing in order to develop.

So optimistic that the Head thinks it's likely they will all be level 3s anyway by half term?

I am back to my hypothesis of bolshy, unprofessional Y3 teacher.

Agree with Feenie....

Two of the children levelled as Level 3 at the end of Year 2 are currently producing writing at level 2c in my Year 3 class. I'm not going back to the parents and claiming that their end of year levels are wrong - just that said children are (for a variety of reasons) finding it hard to write to the same standard immediately in the different environment of Year 3.

Year 4 teacher is finding the same about some of the children who I sent up at the end of last year.

It happens. Children don't perform at the same level in different classes for different teachers, with different styles, different topics etc, at least often not immediately. They tend to very quickly recover over the first 'shaking down' half term, and I am still expected to make certain that all those children make 2 sublevels progress from the end of year 2 level whatever their level now (we have low levels on arrival so aim for accelerated progress in KS2 to endure that they achieve average levels on leaving, hence 2 sublevels per year required)