Ability levels

[wishiwasonthebeach]

Do teachers tell parents which ability level table children are working on?

My son is in year 1 and I know that each table has an animal name, I imagine that they must be working in ability sets but I have no idea what sort if level he is on.

Parents evening was very general, the teacher mostly told me what they have been working on and some targets for literacy. When I tried to find out more about my son in particular she was quite dismissive. I don't know if I should ask her about the tables arrangement or if that's not appropriate.

[poppy70]

Oh and my school is using both at the moment - Baseline and observed and each then compared to Development matters profile. This year they are still using this. We don't take nursery assessments.

[cantthinkofanewnameatall]

I have misgivings about all of this like many other parents and presumably teachers too.

The children who struggle are now expected to reach standards which are quite unforgiving, the more able seem to be getting less differentiation. It seems the emphasis is on sideways stretching which is great but often these children do also want to move on in the curriculum too and enjoy learning completely new things in maths. This idea that you can't go outside of the key stage's material concerns me especially where teaching is not so strong this will be used as an excuse.

[cantthinkofanewnameatall]

Lemon - it's quite woolly though. A child could be a tiny bit below expectations or truly struggling and need interventions and get the same. Or they could be a little above expectations or Ruth Lawrence mark 2 and 4 years' ahead but this wouldn't be reflected.

[mrz]

I would expect the teacher to say your child is almost at the expected level if they do this this and this rather than say your child is below if they are missing it by one or two small elements.

[mrz]

Schools will have the option of introducing the new assessment earlier and abandoning the profile. Many already use tests such as Aspects and PIPS to provide the type of data the government propose.

[lemonpuffbiscuit]

So what was wrong with the original sats levels?

[teacherwith2kids]

The dichotomy I see here - in the government's thinking, as much as anything else - is between

• the apparent reduction in precision at the end of key stages (particularly KS2) along with the replacement of a linear numerical system (level 1,2,3,4 etc ) with a 'text based' one AND
  

• the continued requirement for schools, when inspected, to demonstrate progress for every child at a very fine-grained level, such that progress for every child and for every sub-group cabn be tracked and graphed at any point in the school year and in any year.
  

I don't see the change in end KS assessment being the problem, tbh - though the lack of clarity re end KS2 compared to KS1 is bizarre. There is a new curriculum, with expectations being different, so the assessment against that curriculum obviously needs to change. The problem is the vacuum between those points, coupled with a very high-stakes requirement for every school to be able to fill that vacuum with very rigorous data against which the school's performance and future will be judged.

In that environment, different schools, LAs and commercial companies will do their best (while, in the schools' case still endeavouring to teach a new curriculum excellently on a day to day basis) to fill the vacuum.

[teacherwith2kids]

Some schools are in LEAs that have been able to co-ordinate or decide to make use of specific assessments available (mrz mentions some from ?Leeds? that her school uses), but in other parts of the country there is no such agreement.

Small primaries simply don't have the resources to develop their own individual approach, so what i suspect will happen is that the vacuum will be filled with, initially, an explosion of different approaches.

This will be whittled down to a few, probably through market forces and schools 'voting with their feet'.

Ofsted will then find that it is difficult to reconcile the output of these different approaches to make comparisons between schools and thus arrive at judgements. Although the government won't listen to schools, they will listen to Ofsted, and an even smaller set of 'approved' approaches will emerge.

My guess is that there will also be a further set of 'optional tests', either end year 4 or for each year group in KS2, on the curriculum for each year group, giving rise to e.g. the type of meeting, exceeding, mastery type levels mentioned for KS1.

But while that process happens, there will be a mess.

[mrz]

Most head teachers are being swamped with commercial solutions to the assessment question. There are plenty of alternatives out there if schools haven't thought things through for themselves.

[teacherwith2kids]

I entirely agree that there are many 'solutions' out there - which as I say, is part of the initial 'explosion to fill the vacuum created by the government's dichotomy'.

I am irritated by this not because there are no solutions, but because it should not be up to the school or unverified commercial solutions to create ad-hoc responses to something that the government has created but does not have the budget to follow through completely.

[Toomanyhouseguests]

Sincerely wondering what the government is trying to achieve here. It certainly doesn't fit with all their guff about accountability and standards. Frankly, it sounds like a hot mess designed to waste teachers' time. As a parent, at least I underst SATs. No marking system is ever going to be perfect. It's always important to pay attention, listen closely, use your common sense and remain broadly philosophical about the big picture.

[mrz]

Perhaps part of the problem is that people have forgotten how they worked pre National Curriculum and have become so accustomed to being "spoon fed". Despite teachers moaning about SATs and APP they seem reluctant to let go ... Comfort blankets come to mind.

[teacherwith2kids]

But pre-National cucrriculum is also pre-high stakes Ofsted and their demand to e.g. compare the profgress made in reading by Year 3 Pupil Premium boys compared with non-PP boys and how this compares with progress in other year groups and with nationakl expectations.

Without the high-stakes data driven inspection regime, there is no dichotomoy and no problem. With an inspection system demanding vast quantities of data, and a government assessment proposal that generates very little, yes, schools will 'fuil the gap' - and will try to fill the gap in the way that looks best to inspectors, regardless of how the children themselves are doing.

[teacherwith2kids]

(Bcause if you make 'creating data that shows children make progress' exceptionally important to schools, and basically place no structure or standardisation around the creation of that data, then of course the perverse incentive is there for schools to design, cjhoose and use the data creation system [I will not call it assessment, for in many ways that is not the true puropose of the exercise] that makes their work look best.

If you remnove the major creator iof the dichotomy - the Ofsted data driven machine - then the proposal that schools should adopt the best mode of assessment to fit their needs and children, with checks and balances at the end of each key Stage is entirely sensble for schools and for the mnajority of parents.

However, all assessment systems shhould cater for 'outliers', and while the current roposal says that p levels will be kept for SEN children, I have not seen proposals for outliers who will well exceed the contenf of the Year 6 curriculum ... parrtly because the KS2 ansd KS3 curriculua do not mesh as one is new and the other is not...)

[mrz]

Our PP boys make the same (sometimes better) progress as none PP pupils which is quite easily demonstrated without levels under the current OFSTED criteria. We were inspected at the end of June and the inspectors selected children to hear read.

[teacherwith2kids]

Aas you know, mrz, I was simply choosing an example. Our experience - we were inspected more recently than you - is that the inspectors relied extremely heavily on data (I did not say levels, I said data: the point is that whether we call them levels or not, that data has to be created and captured in whatever form) to drive the focus of their inspections, using examples from books, classroom observations etc to support or refute those original data-driven hypotheses. Judgements in the report were heavily numerical data-based. I do realise that there is scope in the new framework to be less data focused but our experience did not bear this out.

On a factual point, the National Curriculum was introduced in 1988, and revised in 1999. No teacher who has been working for less than 25 years has worked under a 'non National Curriculum' regime, and many schools will have few teachers who have been teaching that long. My own school, which is large, has virtually none - the young, dynamic and excellent head included.

[teacherwith2kids]

On the 'hearing reading' point - hat happened with and without levels, it has been part of the framework of inspections for quite some number of years now. The children selected to read during our inspection were selected by the inspector based on data - children from groups who the data said made less or more progress or reached lower or higher than expected levels, to support or refute those judgements.

[mrz]

We had to provide the data but they were also concerned with evidence to support what the data told them rather than blindly accepting pretty graphs and spread sheets

[mrz]

Yes our pupils were also selected by the inspectors from the PP data.

[teacherwith2kids]

Absolutely. But that is my point (see my post of 11.48) - schools HAVE to create that data. The current assessment proposal gives no way to create the data. So schools will come up with their own ways to do it, uysing in-house or commercial methods.

Then Ofsted will come along and say 'but schools aren't presenting their data in a way that matches the evidence they produce to support it'. Then there will be standardisation by the government.

Rather than the much more obvious - but too expensive, which is why it isn't being done:

• Here is the new NC.
  
• Here are the assessment arrangements for the 'legally reportable' poins at the end of the key stages
  
• Here are materials to support the assessment of pupil progress between these points, so that all schools are working to the same framework and thus can be evaluated against similar yardsticks.
  

Of course Ofsted will still need to collect empirical, observation evidence to support data - IME that is what they have always done. But the vacuum at the heart of current proposals is that there is no standardised way to create and collect this data, despite it being required in enormous detail.

[teacherwith2kids]

We are also ignoring the needs of parents.

IME what parents need (in addition to 'social / behavioural' information about their child) are clear indications, standardised between schools and between phases, ie infant to junior, first to middle, primary to secondary, of:

• What they can do at the moment, what their next steps are and how parents can help
  
• Whether they are above, at or below national expectations for their age
  
• Whether they are making expected or good progress from their starting point or last measured point
  

A school by school assessment system does not allow this, and the government's current end KS assessment propsals do not allow progress to be reported adequately except for a child just at national expectations.

[Toomanyhouseguests]

teacherwith2kids everything you say makes perfect sense to me.

What I still don't get is, why try to make sweeping changes to the system when you cannot afford to do it responsibly. What on earth do they think will happen? What do they want to happen? I'm a cynical person. I tend to ascribe stuff like this to incompetence rather than ulterior motives and conspiracies. But this just looks so obviously stupid that I find it hard to believe that it's mere short sightedness.

[ChocolateWombat]

I agree with teacher, about what parents want. A system which only records information for Ofsted or for teachers doesn't give parents the feedback they need.

The idea that schools devise their own ways of assessing, but that Ofsted is able to then draw meaningful comparisons across the country, between different year groups and key stages and types of pupil, seems crazy to me. If every school is using a different approach, how can there be any consistency or faith in the comparisons?

To me, it sounds lie saying to those teaching GCSE or A Level, 'all set your own mark schemes'. Ie each school decide what an A grade work looks like, and then using that information
On to say X school has achieved higher results, because using their measures they got more As.

Surely, an accepted approach will have to de developed or evolve.

Fine not to have one, but not fine if schools are to be meaningfully compared.

[mrz]

Schools have always created data ... we have teacher's records going back to the 1950s providing information about individual pupils. I have my primary school reports going back long before there were any levels but clearly showing how I was achieving and progressing ... Levels aren't the only way to record pupils achievement.

[mrz]

ChocolateWombat schools can choose different GCSE exam boards so are effectively setting their own assessments