School results - do teachers ever get it wrong?

[Notcontent]

Just curious really what you think.
I just got dd's year 2 results and for the most part there were no surprises, and reflected my understanding of her strengths and weaknesses.

But what surprised me was that her results for music and physical education were only just ok - yet she really excels in those areas outside of school. She took up an instrument a year ago and has progressed very quickly and she is very "sporty". Swims, runs, rides a bike, etc. In fact I expected for her to do better in those areas in her report than things like maths and literacy.

What kind of results have they put in her report for subjects like art and PE? Surely not a grade? If it's just a comment, I would suggest it's possibly come from a comment bank and tweaked.

At end of year 2 you should only get results for numeracy, literacy (speaking and listening, writing & reading) and science.

What does what she participates in outside of school have to do with what she does at school? I was a junior world champion in my sport outside of school, and last picked for every sports team at school. It's a bit like saying a child should get an A for behaviour because they take their plate to the dishwasher every night.

The report is a snapshot of one area of your dd's life. What you see is another shot from a different angle. They may or may not match up. Doesn't matter as long as your dd is enjoying her sports; in the long run she will get plenty of opportunities to display her talents.

my class music reports were always rubbish but my piano ones (had lessons at school) were normally quite good. I just wasn't great at class music lessons, the stuff we did obviously didn't fit my ability or personality or something - I hated performing things.

I think class sports and out of school sports and class music and individual music are very different. They require a different focus, skills and talents to each other. An individual musical instrument is one thing but to be in a class singing lesson or having to improvise with instruments in a group when you may be a very shy child is a completely different situation.

Sports done in school are often very different to those children do outside of school. when I was in Yr2 I think we did gym, dance and some sort of ball sports, we didn't do netball or tennis that young, possibly rounders but nothing much really. We didn't do swimming or bike riding and oddly I only remember us doing running on 2 occasions when we were in senior school (I always wondered how they expected us to run at sports day because we never did it) So your child might be a county level swimmer but if they can't pretend to 'be a leaf floating in the breeze' then it doesn't translate across to school sports. bit of a random example but I used to hate those improvisation dance lessons we had to do.

Some helpful insights - thank you.

Yes, I can just imagine dd being asked to name an instrument or being asked to do something with it and looking at the teacher with a blank look on her face....

Caffeinated - at dd's school they get grades for pe, music, science, geography, etc.

The teacher can only comment on what they see in school. I've taught some children who I knew were doing a particular sport to a high level but since we didn't do that sport in pe they were just average for pe as a subject.

I may mention it if the disparity was quite marked just so that the parent didn't think I had the wrong child or was clueless.

Yes it can be off kilter - the only time I've really gone about a comment in a report was on DD's sport one year, when it was distinctly lukewarm and she was excelling (both in and out of school). Didn't do anything about it though - sometimes wonder if they'd had the wrong child in mind.

Of course teachers can get it wrong sometimes! Particularly when reporting on subjects like music or
Pe which have a lot less curriculum time devoted to them ( than say literacy or maths), there is little written work to refer to and the practical nature of both subjects make it hard to take notes while teaching. Does this make sense?

If the rest of the report is accurate then try to be a bit understanding of how hard it is to report on 30 children's ability in music when there has been 30 mins per week with no written work and few notes

Made!

Interesting. I guess some of this is also very subjective.

if it seems really strange, query it. We thought Dd's preschool comments were a bit odd, the staff made out she was quite a lot behind in a few areas. I put it down to her being different at preschool and at home. Fast forward to receiving her learning journey, half full of photos of another child!

I have a year 2 dc and was stunned that they were able to judge her very able at both music and sport at the last school report. They play no instruments at all at her school. They hardly ever play team games/organised sport. I think it must be very random. The suspicious side of me thinks maybe they bigged these things up to make up for less good reports for literacy and maths. As such I wouldn't worry. If it's anything like our school, there is no opportunity to read music or play an instrument - only to bang a drum in time, how can they possibly tell?