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)?

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

Whether they have top, middle and bottom tables or mixed ability tables or everyone sat at individual desks or some other seating arrangement the actual work still needs to be differentiated to match each pupils level of ability. Do you not think that children will still know that child x has harder work than him everyday or that child y has a more simple reading book than everybody else?
My sons school don't have top middle and bottom tables but he still knows that certain children have the same spellings and that what spellings they have relates to how good they are at spelling. He knows who has good maths skills and who has good English skills and who is not very good at those things. Children work these things out at a very young age.

Why would an above average child spend two years sitting with a TA?

Of course I meant a child said baby level not the teacher.

The yer 1 teacher couldent talk to me last day term bad year report came out she lost her voice and sent ta to reasure me when even the school website explanation of nc levls that 1b was behind.

Year 2 dident get any better teacher anoyed we were questioning her we were not proportioning blame our child had just started in her class but got whole i been year 2 teacher 10 years how dare you question me are you a teacher. do you work in education? cant argue with levels its quite black an white not really subjective to opinion she had no action plan for our pfb as there were kids at bottom and thse who failed year 1 phonics test that extra help focused on despite her regarding level being very low.
when we arranged appintment with head he fobbed us onto dep head who dident know who she was,what our issue was and actuallly said did you consider your child might not be as bright as you think she is?

How does a child who cores average or slightly above average then tank in year 1? i blame the school I blame the teaching.

Mrz in my country that child will be in a special school.

When I asked the head teacher why my son haven't made any progress in English, he told me that I should teach, support him at home. My first language is not english. In Maths he went up more than one level, because he was doing a lot of Maths with me at home.

That's what I thought spanish I wonder if that is Timetoask's experience too?

Missunreasonable that's exactly what we asked the parents ... they seemed to think we should be doing the same rather than finding out what the children could do unaided.

mrz, that child so behind in the curriculum would be in a specialist setting in my country, certainly not expected to be passing through school falling further and further behind without hope of catching up with the rest of the pupils. Sometimes inclusion (in the education sense of the word) is to the determent of the child.

Great links Amberthecat and Mrz.

Enjoyed ready Wroxham schools approach, really was inspiring. Would have been great though if these kind of systems would have been in place before the scrapping of the current one.

Also agree that you can't keep levels from children. Even in DS new school he knew on the first day which table he was sitting on in Maths and what it meant, the other children told him.

I have an added concern atm. Ds school have mixed the years again. Ds (and I) are used to mixed classes but not mixing KS1/2 classes (Y2/3) added to this, ds is going to be taught by a temporary teacher, covering maternity, who has never taught mixed classes before. I've spoken to her and she seems lovely, really bubbly and just the kind of teacher you know will engage with the children but added to this new scrapping of levels I fear Ds may have a 'lost' Y3. I may be completely wrong, but I just have a niggling doubt, there's been a lot of movement teacher wise over the past few months from this school (three more teachers leaving in September since I last posted on here) and that, with the scrapping of the current system, leaves me feeling slightly deflated.

If you have a school with a lot of teacher movement and schools adopting their own method of recording dc progress, rather than a standardised one, it means teachers having to get used to different systems whenever they change schools. This surely can't be a good thing. It will take time to get used to each schools differing approach to this?

but in the UK we have inclusion and parents have the right to send their child to mainstream schools with their peers and expect the school to teach appropriately for their child's needs and ability.

That makes sense now mrsz. I thought you were saying that it was the norm in some schools for normal ability children to be sat with a TA and the TA to be over assisting with all of the work and therefore skewing the child's levels. I obviously misunderstood.

I agree with inclusion to a point. Children who can learn and cope emotionally and socially alongside their peers should be able to attend mainstream school even if they need a little extra support. I do think that children who have very significant additional needs are often better catered for in more specialised environments. The problem we have though is that the current special schools are very specialised environments specifically for those children who could not manage in a mainstream environment even with significant one to one assistance. If we want children with moderate needs to attend special schools then we would need new special schools which cater for those with just moderate needs.

I've withdrawn dd2 from school to HE (her sisters remain in school). All through year 2 her teacher was raising concern verbally. Then her report came and every area had 'in line with expectations' ticked. Yet the narrative, once you got past the 'positive language' showed she was really struggling.

The language does a huge disservice, I think. 'DD2 is beginning to... With support from a TA'. In other words can't yet do it.

'DD2 has been exposed to....' in other words 'was in the room at the time'.

'DD2 benefits from discussing a task within a group before attempting to do it'. In other words 'can't understand the task without help.'

'Expected' for y2 in maths, yet can't reliably add and subtract numbers to 20. Can't understand money at all. The list goes on.

I think reports should be as my DD1's statement report is:
A list of objectives in a table, then a short sentence by each one saying 'met' or 'can do up to 14, working on 15-20.' 'Confident with digraphs, working on trigraphs.'

Then a narrative discussing her strengths/weaknesses overall.

For Ms kids without SEN, those objectives would be simply the learning outcomes for the relevant year group.

If DD2 had a report like that there is no way her school could have got away with saying she was at 'expected' level when she is so far behind.

We want transparency.

No fluff and cuddles are going to help when a child leaves school with no skills and the parents had no idea.

I do think that comments about how involved our generation of parents were have to take into account the age of the Internet. It only came into being in 1991, so most of our parents had no way of knowing that their child's schooling might have been vastly different from a child even 10 miles away.

The children have normal ability but spending two years with a TA attached resulted in school made SEN

We don't have TA in the school, now there are support teachers for children that are falling behind.

are the support teachers qualified teachers or TAs by another name

mrz

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

You sound like truly committed teacher. I understand if it's easier for a teacher to break students into ability group - kind of a necessary evil. But I've seen it done much more subtly and fluidly than in UK state primary school. The tables groups are given special names

To be a primary teacher in Spain you study a diploma for 3 years. Then you are a teacher. To get a job in the public sector you need to do a exam, for example in Andalucia they need 2000 teachers, but there are 5000 doing the exam, then the 2000 with the best marks will get the job ( forever), the 3000 remaining will be in a list to work as a supply teacher.
This 3000 will need to do the exam again and compete with the new candidates.
In the private sector is like here by interview.

To be a secondary teacher you need to get a degree related with the subject you want to teach and do a master for 1 years. Then to get a job in public sector you need to do and exam and be one of the best to get a job forever.
Then support teacher will be qualified in the public sector and in the private I don't know.

We want transparency

No fluff and cuddles are going to help when a child leaves school with no skills and the parents had no idea.

I agree. Tell me if my kids my kids count to 100 or not and this is preventing them from moving on to addition/subtraction to 20 that comes next.

Surely if a software generated narrative on my child's performance - (and I mean no disrespect to teachers who actually type the reports) - can be produced by selecting checkboxes next to the text something similar can be produced for the year group learning objectives.

I think the lack of transparency stems from teachers avoiding parents who will come in and claim their DS can already do it and i can appreciate that is challenging to manage.

I don't have table groups my class move seats all the time

To be a primary teacher in the UK you must have a degree and qualified teacher status spanish to be a TA in my area you need to study for up to 3 years and gain a level 3 qualification

but in the UK we have inclusion and parents have the right to send their child to mainstream

But what is best for the child?
My child with SEN was in a mainstream school for 2 years, I thought having a full time one to one was enough. I thought mainstream would be best. It did nothing for his self-esteem or his learning.
He is now in an excellent special school, doing much better with people that are able to help him progress at his pase.

Anyway, I digress since this thread is not about special education.

I agree that for some children mainstream is best and for other a special school can offer far more but the point is that choice isn't up to teachers or schools and keeping a child back year on year until they reach a standard that may be forever beyond them isn't an option.

mrz I agree entirely. I do think that the current drive for 'inclusion' has swung too far, to the extent that teachers are not allowed to suggest to parents that their child is so catastrophically behind that no amount of 1:1 or interventions are going to help them catch up in a ms school.

I have heard, anecdotally, of teachers not being allowed to attend statement reviews so they can't tell the truth.

The legislation does allow for some children with SEN to be denied the opportunity to have a mainstream education regardless of parental desire (or it used to). There used to be a clause within the education act that stated that where a child's SEN had a significant impact on the education of others that a school could refuse inclusion. I'm not sure if that clause has been removed but it would seem quite silly to remove it entirely as some children really cannot be educated fully and appropriately in a mainstream environment.

That clause makes it clear that a place can only be refused on the grounds that it is incompatible with the efficient education of other children or the efficient use of resources. There are very few cases where this can be used.

What is unhelpful in my view, is the clause that says that LAs must ensure a mainstream placement is provided unless the clause above applies or the parents request a specialist placement. It means that in some cases where parents have no idea what a specialist placement may offer, staff feel they can't highlight it as an option because the child has a right to a ms placement.