DD(10) is now in Y6. She moved to this school at Easter in Y3.
A bit of background: DD was at level 3 across the board at the end of KS1 (end of Y2). Her old school (and pre-school) had requested Educational Psychologist assessments at the beginning and end of KS1 to assess her ability (and challenges) and she was assessed at being various years ahead of her chronological age.
At the end of Y3 she was assessed at level 4a in Literacy and 4c in Maths. At the end of Y4 she was assessed at level 4a in Literacy and 4c in Maths.
At the end of Y5 she was assessed at level 4a in Literacy and 4b in Maths.
DH went into the school at the end of last term to speak to the Y5 teacher about our concerns re DD's lack of progress as we had previously put Y4 down to it not being a good year for her, but hadn't expected Y5 to be a non-starter too. I had a thread about this before, but the teacher pretty much said DD had probably been incorrectly assessed at the end of Y3 and we should make sure she progresses in Y6.
The HT at the old school has always taken a personal interest in DD's academic development and wants to be kept updated with how she's getting on etc. I have told him all of the above. He feels we are right to be concerned about her lack of progress and that she should really be acheiving level 6 at the end of KS2.
Fast forward to last week. DD produced a short piece of free writing in literacy that she was very proud of. She had used short sentences to create tension in her story as it neared a scary bit and had deliberately avoided using adjectives to conceal the identity of the protagonist until the end of the piece as it was an animal and she had wanted the reader to think it was a person.
At the weekend she told us she had been taken out of class as part of a group of 5/6 children to 'work on improving their stories as they were bland'. She was very disappointed to be told this.
DH has looked at the success criteria for various levels for literacy and can see that if the teacher had been looking at level 5 criteria, from what DD has told us about the story, it wouldn't have ticked many boxes. But the story did contain elements of level 6. I also realised that the Y4 teacher had pointed out elements of level 5 attainment in DD's literacy work during parents' evenings. It makes me wonder if they have been incorrectly assessing her work and/or giving her the wrong targets which is why they can't show that she has been improving.
Over the weekend, DD had to write something for her homework. So DH looked at the level 5 criteria and sat with DD and guided her towards acheiving that in every aspects of her work. But my question is why is the teacher/ school not doing that? Especially if DD is showing as having made NO progress whatsoever since she has been at that school and we have brought it to their attention! Should they be relying on parents to download the criteria themselves and work with the DC to acheive it?
What do you think?