Can Someone Please Help Me Understand

[TheCrimsonQueen]

The following results. My Son is coming to the end of Year 1. He turned 6 in May. I have received the following results from the school and they mean absolutely nothing to me.

Suffolk Reading - Age Score 6.33
Youngs Spelling - Age Score 7.3

NFER Maths SAS - 122

In my day we never got numbers. What does this all mean?

Bump

You always get scores way higher than chronological age on these sorts of reading tests. There are various around, and it looks as if your DS is normal.

Do you know why were they screening him? It's not often routine (more something a SENCO would use). You might not want to post those details publicly, but a I think it's quite important that you know what they are.

NFER maths score is above average, but possibly unreliable at this age.

Totally normal tests for all chn in our school! The 1st 2 are his reading and spelling ages so he's pretty much spot on for reading (as his actual age is 6.1) and ahead in spelling . The maths is a standardised score where 100 is average so 122 would be quite well above average.

Thanks for your responses. They do tests at the end of the year for all the children. Everyone in his class.

All children got tested in reception as well and I assume this goes all the way up through the school.

The numbers just don't mean anything to me.

What I do know is that he is bottom of his class for reading. Most of the children are on level 13 of the Chip and Biff series and he is 8. I have no idea where is comparatively in Maths or Spelling to his peers.

Since levels have been removed some schools have moved to using tests which will provide both an "age" and standardised scores/percentile rankings as a way to track a child's progress.

Are you sure about the level 13 books? On the ORT site, Biff and Chip only go up to level 11 (lime). Either way, level 8 is aimed at 6-7 year olds so he is doing fine!

Sorry for the late reply. I know for sure that there are children on level 13. My son has told me that some have even finished all levels.

I've just checked and the ORT and it appears to goes up to level 16. Having not seen what those books are I had assumed they were B&C ones but looks like the higher level books are different series of books.

Thanks for the reassurance but his confidence has been knocked because against his peers he is quite behind. Both my husband and I work full time and so we don't read with him as much as we would like and I feel guilty about that and suspect this is one possible reason why he is falling back.

I am hoping that they will all level out in the end.

He's not behind, honestly! Just because some children are ahead, that doesn't mean that he is behind. DD3 is still on blue books and is April born.

Could you try reading with him in the morning rather than after school? I had a girl who went to after school club till 6 and then when her parents picked her up and took her home and did tea etc, she was too tired to read. When I suggested switching to the morning (she was an early riser which helped) her reading moved on in leaps and bounds! No more battling against a tired child.

If you look on nfer.ac.uk website there is a helpful graph. The scores take into account child's age. 100 is average. Only 17% of children nationally score over 115, only 2% over 130. So he is doing very well at maths. It would help if they included the graph or link to website with the report.

Thank you so much for all your comments and helpful suggestions/links. X