simpson:
Our school used to give out a little sheet of A4 about what was being covered this term, our 'learning journey' theme and personal targets - usually personal targets were never filled in.
This was abandoned post-OFSTED inspection - so now we've no idea what is being covered, save what our kids can explain to us.
I think a lot of the conversation above beautifully highlights the problem. Birmingham LEA primaries still use the APP point system and then convert to NC Levels for parent reports whilst other schools studiously avoid any substantive information to parents on pupil performance beside general indications of working below/ at/ above expected progress.
As has been discussed NC Levels are to be abandoned but replaced by whatever schools deem appropriate. I'm personally prepared to hear that DD2 has achieved 2 unicorns and needs to work hard to earn her 3rd.
Perhaps I am alone in finding this decision nonsensical. I think it is moving parents even further from some form of national expectation of achievement - thereby making us utterly dependent on the integrity of the school we're at.
As in the interesting Trojan horse/ hoax case currently playing out here in Birmingham...technically academies (which many of the schools involved were) are directly under the control of Michael Gove. A letter in today's guardian points out that 2 members of the department of education can sit on any governor's meeting at an academy and queries whether Michael Gove/ someone at the DofE ever exercised that right, given his office had been in receipt/ aware of extremist 'issues' at some of these schools.
Like many forms of privatization - conversion to academy status and devolving marking systems down to individual schools isn't about giving 'schools more power'/ 'Parents more influence' - it's about moving the problem out of the realm of governmental/ LEA responsibility and into the 'grey area' of QUANGO.
What parents (and our children at this young age) actually need is a transparent system whereby we can understand what our children should be doing in a given school year, how they should be performing at a certain age and can have faith that performance data (SATs tables/ OFSTED reports) are in fact based on data gathered under similar conditions.
The new system doesn't have these safeguards and I suspect like any poorly thought out change it will take a scandal or two, a few years of 'governmental review' and then low and behold we discover gosh those LEA's were a useful thing, providing local oversight that schools were broadly doing the right thing, rather than an unregulated free for all.
One of the points of learning history is not to make the mistakes of our past....
One of the points of educating children is about creating the future scientists, leaders, thinkers of the next generation.
Ensuring that a system is in place with checks and balances which protects the right of children to receive a good education seems a very low priority at the moment.