allmixedup:
I've also wondered what these scores mean - but can understand that schools would wish to avoid 'too close' a comparison with friends/ peers - for obvious reasons (no fun if you're bottom of the heap/ can make a child feel bad or even feel there's no point trying/ etc...).
So have a look at the Mumsnet notional expectations for a typical child in their progress through NC Levels: www.mumsnet.com/learning/assessment/progress-through-national-curriculum-levels - scroll down to the bootom and there are two tables explaining how many sub-levels (upper table) progress per school year - and notional end of year achievement (bottom table).
Now to make this all the more ridiculous Gove's parting gift to parents seems to be the removal of recording attainment in terms of NC Levels - and a free-for all reporting of achievement by schools. Therefore be prepared to hear your child has achieved 3 unicorns (which is a fantastic result) but be totally unable to verify what that may mean at other local schools/ regional schools or nationally.
The idiocy of going for a chaotic individual system of marking unique to schools is obvious - but I think it's about keeping parents well and truly in the dark about their children's actual achievement until it's far too late to do anything much about it. The only point we'll actually receive ye olde fashioned NC levels will now be end KS1 SATs (Y2 - end of infants) and end KS2 SATs (Y6 - end of Juniors). Far too late in the cycle to do anything if, for whatever reasons, your school has chosen to not be particularly informative about how your child is actually fairing as a student in core subjects like English (Reading/ Writing/ S,P&G), Maths or Science.
This system will do nothing to improve parent/ teacher relations which are increasingly strained and full of distrust. Teachers, as a profession, need to hear the repeated pleas from parents (here on MN, in real life, in the national news, etc...) for a straightforward, universal system of marking achievement which can be conveyed quickly to parents. Letter grades had their flaws (a C or D grade can be disheartening) - but parents trusted the teacher to tell it like it is. I get that you don't want to deal with upset parents - but in fact you're creating hordes of upset parents that feel they have absolutely no idea what is going on:
You don't regularly send home examples of actual school work
You won't discuss suitability for 11+
You won't advise us what to do at home
Your are loath to tell us our child is struggling - hiding behing verbose reports that tell us very little in actuality.
Maybe - in all the union striking/ voting/ yelling at politicians - you ought to think about the parents (and non-parents) who fund you to educate the next generation and actually are rather entitled to have some verification that 'learning'/ 'progress' is actually happening at finer levels than end of Key Stage NCT testing results.