So now levels have been scrapped how will we know what progress our dc are making?

[MotleyCroup]

Ds has done really well in his KS1 end of year report. He's coped with a change of school as well as the SATs (his school didn't keep it discrete) and he's making new friends.

Question is, at the end of Y3 what then? If things stayed as they were I would know, by his next parents evening, what (if any) progress he was making. Now how will I know? What will be put in the current systems place?

Why have they scrapped the current system (when I'd just got my head around the meaning of the levels)?

OK I'll rephrase unfortunately assessment doesn't tell you when a child is coasting

OECD found that "UK state schools outperform UK private schools when socio-economic background is factored in."

That's very interesting, mrz, I've long suspected as much! Do you have a link to this?

lots critics of 11+saying brands kids as failures.

now national rankings for 5 and 11 year olds

In england we still have sats years 2 and 6
wales on about testing yearly as they have declined.

but all throughout school from reception upwards kids can feel like failures.

we had so may tears in year 1 and start year 2 as she got told she was reading baby level, she was on bottm table, she was never picked for things.

www.oecd.org/pisa/46624007.pdf

no national rankings 3asAbird

3asabird, sorry if I am misunderstanding but no teacher in their right mind would ever say a child was reading at a "baby level". Another child might but it is just not feasible that a teacher would ever have said this to her.

Really interesting conversations guys - and Amberthecat - good to know that a marking system related to the new national curriculum is being devised via a union (NAHT) although it seems as a mere parent I have to wait until Novebmer to learn what will be recommended as one means of tracking progress.

Although I take the point that freeing schools up to determine how to deliver their own curriculum/ tailored to their school or community needs is laudible - I do have to wonder at how this is being handled.

Because simultaneous to letting individual schools implement curriculum structure as they see fit - there is the removal of any standardised system of recording progress which (although there may have been some game playing) notionally provides parents with an 'index' of performance against agreed national expectations.

It is this second removal of structure which has me concerned.

Curriculum is freely administered & individual to schools (and I rather imagined not closely monitered by DofE/ OFSTED -just going by Trojan Horse here in Birmingham)

System for marking is individual to schools and can make it near impossible for a parent to understand how their child might be performing in relations to friends/ relatives at different schools.

I get that parents/ pupils can find 'testing' upsetting - but I think part of the problem (and the reasons for limiting testing in England) is teachers are terrified of bad results and therefore overkill on preparing/ training for the test + tension is picked-up upon by children/ parents. For teachers/ schools testing is 'high stakes' - thus the skewing of many Year 6 pupils final year in primary to endless preparation for KS2 SATs. Teachers are frightened to predict too high a result of SATs and get it wrong. Teacher's are frightened borderline pupils won't achieve on the day. Etc....

Very few people like tests - but if children were regularly tested, in an environment which encouraged no prior preparation, and those results were sent simultaneously to both parent/ school - it would then be completely possible for parents to know annually how there child is doing against national standards.

And maybe that is what needs to be happening. I get that YR - Y1 is very young and children need time to adjust to the school environment and grow into a pupil ready to learn, but Y1 testing on phonics is now introduced I think. Obviously Y2 there are Teacher Assessed (TA) KS1 SATs. Y3 - Y5 - if parents had annual results for their children + school reports - these two independent pieces of progress information together can help parents formulate a picture of how their child is doing. Moreoever it keeps schools 'honest' - you can't be saying to a parent their DC is a GENIUS and have a testing body send them a result which says their child can barely add.

I have no idea if Gove/ DofE are heading toward more/ less high stakes testing - but the system of telling parents at the 11th hour of a particular key stage how they're child is actually doing against national standards is, quite simply, too little too late.

www.gov.uk/government/news/schools-win-funds-to-develop-and-share-new-ways-of-assessing-pupils

The thing is, in other countries testing is domeyhing that is done on a weekly basis right from the start (think 4~5yo). It's done by the teacher on an ongoing basis and test really don't have the importance that the SATS have here. It's just something you do as part of the normal day teaching, just as you do exercises.
Clearly too much pressure to a grove x marks can be detrimental but apart from specific national exams such as Alevels, the pressure to 'perform' isn't there. Nit for the schools, nor the teachers. But each child know exactly where they are.
Having gone through that system and seen what happens here I would say that regular evaluation is better. Here bith my dcs have always known Who us doing well and who isn't. When dc2 was taken away to have some 1-1 in Y1 he knew very well it wasn't normal and reserved for the ones who are struggling. Just as my very able dc1 knows he is at the top the class. And everyone knows that in his class (coent from the teacher in his report).
What dc2 doesn't know/realized is how much he has progressed since he was in Y1. From a child needing support, he is now at the top but in his mind, he is still 'but that good' (again his own words). Regular evaluation would allow to share with the child his progress in a way that saying 'oh you've done well dc2' doesn't convey because the teacher is likely to say that for a child having moved from 1 sub level when he was expected to move his 1/2 but the majority of the class had actually moved by 2 sub levels.

The other issue of course is that the more leeway you are giving to schools, the more you take the chance some schools will cater for their 'population' which also means taking the risk if a child in one school nit getting the full curriculum because the others aren't able to acheive that.

Schools aren't being given any leeway they are just as accountable for demonstrating progress to the LEA, DfE and OFSTED under the new system as they are under the old. In fact I think they will be more under the microscope than ever.

"I've been really shocked by the utter lies told to my friends(wp which the true extent of which are coming to light at the end of her primary years and the 11+)and appalled that they pay thousands for it."

Absoluitely. Private schools by using their own assessment systems and reporting progress however they wish, can effectively hide how badly they are doing by each child.

The most egregious example of this came from a child i taught when she was in Y2. Her parents could n longer pay the school fees, and were devastated because they had been told 'she's working 2 years ahead of state school levels, as all our pupils do'. Parents came in specially to discuss provision for able pupils etc as part of trabnsfer.

then the child arrived. far from being 2 years ahead, she weas actually a good 2 years behind expected levels for y2 - despite having no SEN (just very, very poorly taught) she went straight onto our SEN register, had daily 1:1 phonics, maths and writing interventions and specific differentiated work in class etc as she was working at reception levels.

The parents had absolutely no idea, having trusted the private school's reporting. It was, let us say, a difficult conversation......

unfortunately that can happen in the state sector even with NC levels.

Not if parents are given proper,detailed regular info re levels and progress alongside national expectations.

Mrz, I have never had a state - state transfer with such a large issue. I have had 'top of class' pupils being surprised to be 'middle of class' pupils in a different school, and I have seen writing levels that I have disagreed with by a sublevel or two each way [levelling writing is notoriously hard, which is why good schools moderate internally and externally all the time].

I have never, except for that private - state transfer, seen a claim that a child was at a level equivalent to 3b [the minimum for 2 years ahead] but actually be achieving below level 1.

mrz, thanks for the link.

I think what that school is doing is so spot on. The SATs are a good test, but I wouldn't think them suitable to frequent assessment - teachers would teach to the test.

Computerized frequent assessments, that don't seem like tests to children, that don't add to the administrative hassle teachers and schools are already under would be brilliant.
-They keep record of students' progress in a database.

-they allow for personalised education, this child can do all Xtables but is flakey with his 7s
-they track progress with simple discrete learning objectives that won't require teaching for the test and free up classroom time for teachers.

What I like about the phonics test is the simplicity of it. I know there is an additional admin burden though.

Teachers can spend their time focusing on not-easily assessed objectives, such as handwriting and written essays.

This is so good to hear, just sorry it comes to late for mine.

i think its fine for kids to know where they fall in the class ranking when they are mature to manage their own learning around the time they start studying for GCSEs. Before then I think its pretty cruel and should be much more subtle.

How do you prevent young children from being aware of this in a mixed ability classroom? It can be as subtle as possible but children will always be aware of which is the top table, middle table, bottom table etc. they will also know within their table who is struggling the most and who is the most able. Children know which book bands are the lowest and which are the highest. I can't see any feasible way of differentiating work in a mixed ability classroom without children picking up on the differentiation. Children are not stupid and they can easily identify who is cleverest and who is not so clever for themselves in KS1 so you are not going to keep this information secret until GCSE stage.

YY children DO know and I'm not sure that trying to make it a secret is good actually. It could also say that it's a shame to be really good and a shame that you are not good at all.

Interestingly you do get the 'very good ones' dumping themselves down in secondary to be able to fit in. And the 'nit good at all' feeling ashamed...

Try not having a top, middle and bottom table Missunreasonable it's perfectly possible

Where I come from it works like this: Every year (from primary onwards) pupils have exams at the end of each term for every subject (three exams each year). These exams take place during 1 week and cover the topics learnt up to that point.
At the end of the year you get another end of year exam, if you fail, you have to repeat the entire year.
An average is calculated from the results of each exam which is used as the pupil's end of year grade.
Why can't this sort of system be used here? Why wait until year 6 when it could be too late to know if the child has understood anything?

What happens to the children who fail year after year?

You get lessons during the summer and you can a second chance to pass the exam.
The pass rate is not impossible, and should be doable for an average person provided that they understood the material and they study. My own sister didn't pass one year and she had to repeat it, it worked wonders for her and forced her to nuckle down.
There is no point making someone progress to the following academic year if they will be unable to keep up.

but what if you still don't pass? In my class last year I had a 6 year old already developmentally 4 years behind ... who wouldn't pass any such test

PastSellByDate: "Teachers/ Teaching unions have agreed these changes as well - and that's because it also suits them not to be terribly clear with us PITA parents who have the temerity to actually want to understand where a good pupil should be by this or that point in school."
You are therefore suggesting that teachers do not have the best interests of the pupils in their schools as their foremost goal.
I, and all the teachers in both my school and my local authority, spend considerable time working out strategies to work with parents and involve them in their child's learning. We did not suggest scrapping levels and, until there is an adequate successor, are continuing to use them, both internally and to report to parents,

Teachers and Teaching Unions did not agree to these changes. Mr Gove's announcenent came out of the blue and was a shock to all.

I've heard a number of schools say that they will continue to use the old levels but I'm not sure how they plan to do this with the changes to the curriculum which don't match.

teacherwith2kids we've had parents very shocked to find their above average child can't do anything independently because they have spent two years attached to a TA who did everything for them ... so the levels are in fact the TA's level not the child's.