Reception reports - what is exceeding this year and progress made?

[BeatriceBean]

Hello, I'm pleased with my daughters report and really only concerned with the comments from the teacher as I'm not overly fussed about the target driven eyfs reporting BUT I'm curious....

• How exceeding does a child have to be to get exceeding? How many in a class would get them - as in is it only a few in a year, or 1/3 of a class?
• Do many get exceeding in the non reading/writing/maths areas in reception? I'm not sure if they have had the chance to "exceed" in technology/ world/etc - not that I mind as I wouldn't change anything about the reception year my daughter has just had, its more of a curiosity about the concept.

Finally "progress made".. I used to be a teacher (not infant) and I don't get this. It isn't like effort grades is it - I don't get the difference between very good/expected etc. If a child starts reception reading already and finishes with "exceeding" do they still ge very good progress or expected? I just don't really understand how progress made relates to very much - especially if the child has already "progressed" well in preschool so comes in already meeting some goals.

Sorry typo on my part.

My DC's report had tick boxes for emerging, expected and exceeding. No numbers at all.

Regarding Loobylou's point about child directed versus adult directed, my DC's report referred to her willingness to initiate activities, address challenges she comes across, solve problems herself, etc.

Reading between the lines, it also appears she talks a lot, is a tad bossy, and may or may not let others have a go as often as she should. And she's not good at tidying up. We're trying to work on all those things.

Lawn...we too have comments regarding the characteristics of learning but I was just wondering about how much child initiated evidence plays a part in final outcomes and if school are told if they don't see it x amount of times through child initiated then they can't have that outcome...

Interesting to see the variations on what is 'exceeding'. DS1 just had his report and he is 'expected' in all areas apart from reading and writing, where he is 'exceeding'. He's on stage 9 reading books at school but reads more challenging books at home and often brings books in to show the class or discuss a topic - so maybe that's "showing initiative" which they're looking for? He writes in fairly simple sentences (though he uses some connectives to form longer sentences), but his spelling is very good due to the amount of books he reads.

More interesting to me were the comments; that he's a bit bossy and over-confident, and also doesn't give a toss about stickers does things because they interest him rather than to get the teacher's praise/a reward.

DD got exceeding in a number of areas, but not writing. She writes little stories with interesting vocab, punctuation including commas between 2 adjectives, full stops, ellipses, question marks and speechmarks. She also uses similes. However, she didn't get exceeding because she doesnt have conflict / resolution in stories.

Her reading is fluent and expressive. She reads gold level school books and shortish chapter books at home. She got exceeding for reading. It's odd how much variation there is between schools.

DD last year did all that Galena's DC did but didn't get exceeding because (a) she wasn't an NC L2C in writing and (b) she did not choose off her own back to write non fiction.

She got exceeding in reading but her best friend (gold level) didn't.

She didn't get exceeding in maths because although able, it doesn't float her boat & she wouldn't voluntarily do maths off her own back.

does 'doing it off their own back' get covered by a child in choosing time opting to go and do some writing/counting rather than playing with something? both of mine would probably choose to do work in this situation (odd children) but I can't see any other situations where they could have the opportunity to demonstrate that in the classroom.

That is exactly what I mean, DD would have chosen to write/colour whenever she could (her teacher had issues trying to get her to play outside) but wouldn't have done maths in this way (or non fiction writing) so got "expected" which quite frankly was bonkers considering how got she was (still is) at literacy.

To get exceeding, a child needs to be doing (whatever it is) by their own choosing, not just because a teacher asks them (according to HT last year).

It is becoming increasingly clear that this expensively implemented 'national standard' that is - apparently - moderated - is a bit pointless, and that actually you can only use it to compare within a class or as a very rough guide.

DC1 has a mix of 3s and 2s, and I'm reasonably confident that would be the case regardless of the school, but the number of 2s and the number of 3s could, it seems, vary hugely.

I could be wrong, but I though the 80% of evidence from child initiated activities had been scrapped with the new profile. Obviously lots of your evidence should still come from observations of child initiated activities and there should be a balance. But I thought the new one allowed for more flexibility.

Cheebame - that's exatly the case for my daughter - and exactly my point with the thread I think - its all rather pointless at best, and damaging at worst.