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.

Mrz
I accept that development is not necessarily linear
but because there are no y3,4&5 nc benchmarks, then interpolate
whether you use linear interpolation or some other best fit ....
I don't know
this is why parents are so exasperated
it seems that the only parents who know what is truly going on are teachers, teaching assistants, the parents who go into schools to help & governors
so much for parental engagement
I give up
I don't think we will agree

I don't see what the problem is hear. Every year now has expectations that have to be reached by the end of that year. Hence the new emerging, expected, exceeding. A children can be emerging in Y3 (but lets say 25% behind and working at an expected Y2 level), they can be expected, or they can be exceeding (and working lets say have completed 50% Y4 work). It is just all linearly progressive and children are told at the moment - in absence of any formulation assessment criteria how exactly emerging, expected, exceeding a child is - but will probably be told thins half way through the year and at the end - because it is very difficult to know where a child will end up at the years beginning.

I think the point is good teachers can confidently give parents lots of useful information; whether they are making expected progress, what they can do now and what they need to learn to do next, whether the children are on track to achieve / exceed the expected levels at end of Key Stages against those criteria, at certain points in schooling how their individual child compares to national. The trouble is some parents don't trust this and want quantitate data (e.g. sub-levels, linear progress, comparative data) that just doesn't exist. With the current system I feel the only way some parents will have the level of information they want would be for them to either be in lessons, pupils to have weekly ranked tests with published results, have every scrap of AfL information teachers note on their planning explained on a weekly basis or for schools to invent a completely new assessment method (that is likely to be completely different from the school next door or across the country as they've had to spend hours inventing it themselves due to no government input to standardise it).

AsBrightAsAJewel
I can get all the reports out for my dcs and they are mostly full of meaningless platitudes, I rarely get any view of how they are really doing

If you want an idea of how your DC is progressing versus national or international standards it is reasonably straightforward to purchase workbooks/practice papers from reputable suppliers and have your DC complete them at home. You will quickly get a feel for their skills and for gaps in their knowledge. IMVHO one of the most useful things a parent can do is to help DC fill little gaps/bridge little weaknesses as soon as they appear.

it seems that the only parents who know what is truly going on are teachers, teaching assistants, the parents who go into schools to help & governors

This is very true ime. It causes a lot of simmering resentment among parents too.

Very, very true Bonsoir. It's constructivefor the child and puts the parent's mind at rest.

It's healthier to focus on your own DC and what they are going to need to achieve in the long run than on relative position versus a small peer group as measured by a class teacher. The expectations of primary schools are not perfectly aligned with everyone's reality.

AsBrightAsaJewel

I was really happy with the old reports - levels, sub levels, general and personal reflections. The new ones seem a poor relation.

I just wish politicians would stop changing everything every five to ten years.

Poppy there have never been national expectations for every year so they can vary from school to school. There are only expectations for the end of each Key Stage the others are made up by LEAs, advisors and head teachers.

Jacobib I can tell you that as a parent and teacher being told which ability group my child was in or their position in class was useless fluff and told me nothing of any value. However being told my son needed to improve x,y and z and my daughter needed for focus on a,b and c was helpful.

Did I know where my children were compared with national expectations in Y1/3/4/5 ...no! Did it matter" ...no'

Pear potter its 25 years since the last change

Mrz
we are not all teachers (as you are) and do not have your inside view or wisdom
parents are looking in from the outside and relying on the teachers to tell us what is going on

Jacob I'm a teacher and a parent and my wisdom is that worrying about ability groups and non existent national expectations is a futile occupation

I'm not sure why you imagine being a teacher gave me an inside view of my children's position in their school or in comparison to the children across the country. Just like any parent I had to trust in the information in reports and from talking to their teachers.

Jacob- what exactly do you want to know?

It is not futile to be concerned about where your child is regarding national expectations.
At the end of schooling, pupils will get onto A Level or University courses based on their grades. In order to do A Levels or go to good universities they need to be performing better than average.....it is reasonable to want to know if they are on track for that.
And to say that there are only expectations for Year 2 and Year 6 maybe true officicially. However, it also means that in order for pupils to get from where they were at the start of KS1 to where they end up at KS2, teachers will have a sense of what kind of progress needs to be achieved by the end of Year 3, 4 and 5, even if it is not reported to government. Of course teachers break down the required progress into chunks, rather than just seeing it as a 4 year thing. And parents simply want to know that information too. I don't believe for a moment that teachers cannot say if a pupil is at, above or below national expectations in different areas.
I agree that where they sit within an individual class may not be so meaningful as there are bright and much less bright classes. The reason people often ask for this information, is because the other information about how they fit in terms of national expectations is not forthcoming. And the other reason, is simply that the child exists within that class or year group, often for a number of years and people ask,min order to find relative strengths or weaknesses, in order to support further. They cannot easily do that without the information.

And it is not true that different boards at GCSE/A Level set different expectations for an A grade....they are standardised by QCA. GCSEs and A levels have to act as a common currency for employers,colleges and universities. There will never be total consistency, but broad consistency. A student with an A grade will be known by employers, colleges, teachers, parents and universities to be exceeding the average and someone with an F grade to be below. Having objective feedback about current levels in primary school enables parents to know pupil strength and weakness, what they need to do next (if they are told what is needed for the next level) and also to have a sense of where their child fits in the wider student body. Knowing they are below average, might mean parents in Year 5 look at a different kind of secondary school, to one they might look at if they know they are above average. If they don't have this information, how can they make informed choices?
I want to be informed about my child by the school. I want to know what their current attainment is, to have a sense of how this fits in terms of expectations for that age group and to know the next steps towards progress. Schools hold that information and are working to help pupils make that progress. The information simply needs to be shared. I don't believe it if a teacher says they don't know the answers to those questions (what would Ofsted think if a teacher couldn't say where a child currently is, where they fit nationally, how much progress they have made in a year or what they need to do next) and I am offended by a refusal to give the information when asked for it. And I will always pursue that information with the Head or whoever if it is not forthcoming, because I view the withholding of that information as ridiculous and damaging.

no surprises
dc is doing well or not?
dc is struggling with tables for example
dc is doing well but could do with a nudge on reading
dc is not paying attention in class and is a disruption, what is going on
and then the alignment to whatever benchmarks are available
and in the intervening non-benchmark years I would expect the school to provide a meaningful measurement in between those end-stops

mrz - we only get reports once a year in Scotland. These are produced at the end of the year by which time it may be a bit late to do much about any issue that has been developing over the last ten months. If teachers are not forthcoming about my DCs' progress at parents evenings what questions should I ask to gauge how they are doing? We don't have the exam papers referred to by Bonsoir so as a parent who does not work in the education sector it is important to me that I get a good indication from the teachers as to how my DCs are getting on at school.

That's the point! Although there are different exam boards for GCSEs and A levels to final expectations are the same just as primary schools may be using different assessment methods but the end expectations will be the same!

Clouteydumplin you also have a very different curriculum and I may be wrong but you don't have
NC levels either?

That is the information I would want too Jacob and not an ability group or level in sight

We don't have NC levels in the same way that you do in England. There doesn't seem to be any useful benchmarking for parents, which is why it is so important that we get decent feedback from teachers at parents night. To simply be told that my DC is working to his or her abilities with nothing to benchmark those abilities against means that I have no idea how he or she is really doing.

I agree parents need information cloudy but I don't agree with those that believe knowing who is in the same ability group or other comparisons are helpful

Sorry cloutie my iPad keeps changing your name!