Help no levels

[Feeeeee]

Hi
Can anyone help like all schools we don't get levels anymore how are we to understand how our children are doing at school?

Each year group has a set of objectives for each subject which a child should be able to master by the end of the year. Schools will have different ways of assessing/recording these objectives but all will have the same ones to teach ( unless you are in an academy which doesn't have to follow the national curriculum!)

Thank you, but still doesn't really help, my oldest always had levels which for me was much easier, I have just had parents evening for my year 5 child and have no idea how he's doing at school, when I tried to ask the teacher she didn't really answer, all she wanted to do was talk about was how he is in class. I like to support my children's learning but feel I can no longer so that.

Hi OP our school has explained that they are rewriting the levels and will communicate them once agreed. They are collaborating with other schools in the borough so they are all the same. Early indication is that we will have 4 sub levels within each level. My understanding is that each school is free to set their own system, not necessarily eliminate levels altogether...

Our school seem to just have emerging expected and exceeded
But most children are in the expected but in year 3 they all had very different levels, don't understand how they can now be the same. Our school hasn't really explained anything.

But the levels will bear no relationship to the previous levels you are familiar with. We have six sub levels per year group ( we use a system called Target Tracker) So my Year 6 children are currently working their way ( in the majority of cases) through the Year 6 objectives and levels. They are therefore assessed as 6b, 6b+, 6w, 6w+, 6s or 6s+ But as we have only taught roughly a sixth of the objectives for the year the vast majority are at 6b ( ie the beginning of the year 6 objectives) Unless you know which objectives have been covered, but your child hasn't mastered, the actual level means practically nothing! ( Unless your child is working on the year 2/3 objectives-in which case you might have some concerns!

But different schools will have different systems.

I have no idea how much progress he has made since end of y3 and he's now y5, I'm just finding it really hard as I now feel I have no idea how he is doing or what he needs to work on.
Even having that would be better than nothing, we have 1 target per subject and won't get anything else now until March then June.

We have exceeding expectation, meeting expectation and below expectation. We get this broken into effort and attainment. This really useful for example DD is dyslexic and she tries really hard in literacy some gets exceeds, but attainment is below expected.

See even that gives u a little more info than what we get. In y3 he got 3b in maths but I know of others that got 4c but end of y4 they all got expected, no one got exceeded, but they told us expected meant they were a 3b/3a which doesn't really make sense. Then today all we got was one target.

We have been given very little information on this except that we now have entering, developing and secure as levels and no information on any objectives. I've read through the government info for teachers (there doesn't appear to be any for parents) which was a bit of a hard slog (and I'm uni level educated) so many parents would find it really hard! The school is a best not very good at communication and tend to be surprised that a parent actually understands this stuff anyway. God knows what they will think when they get my list of questions, now I've ploughed through all that! They say they are working with similar local schools which tells me that expectations from the levels will be pitched low as expectations of the children in these schools are that they achieve below national average. If I knew what the objectives were it would be easier to gauge whether he is meeting them and if we could achieve more by stretching him further.

Previously we had level objectives. If a child achieved a certain percent they were said to have achieved level C , if they achieved a higher percent they would be awarded level B and if they achieved all (often plus some from next level) level A. It was never an exact science and often varied from LEA to LEA or school to school. Technically the sub levels didn't exist in the National Curriculum which seems mad as in KS1 tests children were awarded a,b,c.

Now we gave year objectives which LEAs and schools are dividing (often into thirds) and children will be assessed as Year (and equivalent of a, b,c)

The dc's school is doing something called Solo Taxonomy. I haven't quite for my head around it yet.

OP - your school are being deliberately obtuse.

This is not unusual.

Why don't you just buy some Y5 workbooks from W H Smiths and do them with him.

You care more about your child's progress / attainment than his teacher ever will.

meglett it's in the government information on levels if you're interested, once you read through a couple of times it does make sense. All about the various cognitive stages a child goes through and what levels of understanding they can apply to a concept and which stage they are at, at any given point.

It will be interesting to see how schools apply this relative to their demographic and what this will mean in practice for the overall level of achievement ie. will normally high achieveing, MC schools pitch theirs much higher than schools in areas which are very deprived...