New national curriculum levels???

[BlotOnTheLandscape]

I thought that levels and national expectations had gone in the new curriculum?

We had parents evening tonight and the first thing we were shown was the 'individual learning plan' which all children have, complete with the 'national expected level' for the year group and where they expect children to be at the end of the year.

I thought this had all gone with the new curriculum?

Levels as in 4b, 5a etc have gone but there is still a benchmark stage/level each child should be at for the end of KS2. Most likely the word level has been used because of familiarity.

Have these 'levels' been published?

There are no national levels any more ( except for year 2 and 6) so schools are expected to make up their own!!

Can't be published- every school is expected to devise their own!

Yes, it's ridiculous.

The old levels and sub levels have gone (apart from we all still use them because they are better at describing ability that the new set) and we now measure; above, below and within expected year group outcomes or some crap like that!

Problem comes when you get a level 2a child into year 2 who is exceeding year 1 outcomes, if they make any progress at all they're also be exceeding year 2 outcomes and therefore looks like they've made no progress.

It confuses my head and I'm supposed to be using it!

DS's Y1 teacher was using levels - 1a, 2c etc. - at parent's evening last night.

Year 2 and Year 6 are still using NC levels this year, as that is how SATs will be assessed at the end of the year.

For the other years, there are no national expected levels as MC lels as in 1, 2, 3 etc have gone. The a, b, c bit was never official anyway.

At my school we are no longer using NC levels, other than for the official SATs results. We are now using a Sheffield based assessment grid, created by the LEA. Most of the Sheffield schools are using this, and it has been picked up by some other schools outside of the authority too.

www.statsheffield.org/

The teacher got it wrong then, which is understandable with all the confusion I think. I was given a level which is apparently the national expectation (not for years 2 or 6) and where they expect my DC to be at the end of the year.
It's all a nonsense anyway as as far as I am concerned the DC are doing just fine but I was surprised to be told a national expectation.

We are using the LEA suggested levels etc. Crazy situation - no national structure, and so schools are having to look towards local authorities or make it up as they go along.

It has been made clear to us that we are not expected to explain it all to parents, that it is simply a way of assessing the school, not individual children.

It is, actually, a complete nightmare.

The idea behind it is good and has merit but the execution has been very poorly managed

We are sticking with levels until County tell us what we need to switch to. I will be reporting levels to our parents.

My DC school are also sticking with levels although DD is in yr2 which would still have them anyway.

I think many schools have stuck with the old levels for now, at least primary schools. The secondary school my dc go to has moved to GCSE grades even for Y7, obviously the Y7 have very low grades but it makes sense.

Trouble with using old levels still is that the criteria used to allocate them was by assessing against old curriculum statements which are different to the new curriculum. It doesn't give a true reflection of whether children are meeting the required standards in the new curriculum.

So what do things like e3 and e4 mean then? They aren't my DCs levels but that is the format.

I'm assuming it's the schools own reporting. A bit like in the past: a-e for attainment and 1-5 for effort maybe

The new curriculum is arranged into year groups so maybe they're using the term 'national expected levels' to express whether children are completing the work set for their year group?

Could e3 mean exceeding the curriculum for Year 3?

There are no longer levels (exception being Y2 and Y6) and there have never been national expectations for every year group only for the end of each key stage ...

We are using a system a bit like EYFS - standard 1 meaning the curriculum content for Y1 -6 and sub dividing into emerging secure and exceeding

I'm not sure how schools claiming to still use levels are able to apply levels to new content

We have the same type of system mrz, but what we are struggling with is identifying what those statements REALLY look like in a classroom. We start standardisation and internal moderation training soon, but until then I think teachers have somewhat differing views on what some of those statements actually mean which could result in variations between parallel classrooms.

Are schools allowed to have nothing in place at this stage? Is that normal?

I think we also have a similar system to early years, so emerging, meeting, exceeding etc, but with an additional "mastering" which crosses over with emerging in the level above. Guess the letters could be something similar?

( confused governor who'd just got to grips with raiseonline and the last lot of levels and progress points )

They should have something in place, although we don't know how the year 2 or 6 sats will look after next year. Parents may not be aware, though.