Understanding progress vs attainment in yr1 report

[Salvadorkoala]

DD has brought home her yr1 report. I'm a bit confused over the correlation between progress and attainment though.

Attainment I understand - emerging/expected/exceeding. She got exceeding in reading as I would have expected from book bands.

Progress has me puzzled though. It says it measures progress from the end of EYFS to the end of KS1 and for each subject is either not on track, on track, or good.

For reading she got on track. Surely if she is exceeding

Posted too soon! If she is exceeding for reading then why only on track for progress rather than good? She started the year on green books and is finishing on lime - what would they need to do to achieve good progress?!

Forgot to mention - there was some blurb about how not every child can be a high flyer but they can all aim for good progress and I'm not sure what more she could do to demonstrate good progress

Some children make steady progress, so if you have a high starting point, you can make on track progress and finish at a high end point for the year.

Others make faster progress for a time, then slow down (probably more normal, I think). So, they may start lower, but have a spurt.

It is hard to start high and make better than expected progress.

And the school are right - the aim is to keep all of the children moving on track. Children who have lower attainment can make good progress, which shows the teaching is working.

I've forgotten details on book colours, so I'll use numbers

say you need to be on 6 at the end of yR, 12 end y1 and 18 end y2
that is 6 steps of progress for reading each year.

but at the end of yR she was at 9.
if she makes 6 steps of progress she will be at 15 end y1.

That would be expected progress (6 steps) whilst being high attainment.

Conversely someone starting y1 on 4 and finishing on 12 would be above average progress, but only expected attainment.

I think green to lime(6 levels) is a good(great) progress for book bands.
But how about her other reading skills?
I think you really need to ask the teacher, we are only guessing.

The expected level by the end of year 2 is white books, which is a band below lime. So effectively she has exceeded the KS1 target a year early, hence the exceeded in attainment. But how on earth can that only be on track progress rather than good?! It makes no sense to me.

Because if she started the year on green, I would expect her to have finished Reception with exceeding. Exceeding to exceeding is expected or on track progress. Expected to exceeding is good/accelerated progress. Since the removal of a national system of levels every school does things slightly differently, so you'll only get a proper answer by asking the school.

If she was predicted to be exceeding and is exceeding then it's expected progress!!

It's crazy, silly govt stuff.

So my child who is exceeding can only get expected progress as it's now expected of her. She can't exceed exceeding!

That makes sense, she did get exceeding in reception. I think it was the high flyer stuff which annoyed me a little as she's not exceeding at anything else but reading is her forte and it almost feels like it wasn't recognised in progress terms. But that does make sense.

Very hard to make exceeding progress with high achievers in any area of the curriculum though and with the progress scores now in play schools will have to stretch those outliers so they don't pull down their averages.

It's all a swizz. On of my dc came home with a report that had him working at age expectations in reading, with a written comment that was positively glowing and with no areas for improvement given, and yet, is making less than expected progress in reading for his year group.

I spoke with his teacher who said that the progress was entirely based on a single reading assessment. She then reassured me I needn't worry as his reading age is 10+. He's just turned 8.

when I pointed out that this was contradictory she said reading age was based entirely on whether he can sound out complex words, and had no relationship to his understanding of a text.

It's all bollox, really. I teach secondary and wouldn't dream of sending home a progress report that relied on a single assessment, nor would I contradict myself throughout as to what a pupil could or couldn't do yet.

You know your child. Keep reading to her and with her and she will be fine.

If your dd was exceeding in reception and is exceeding in year 1 this means she is on track. In other words the school expected your daughter to achieve "exceeding" in year 1 and she did so she is on track.
If your dd was exceeding in reception and now in year 1 was "expected", that would mean that she was not on track.
If your dd was "expected" in reception and in year 1 was exceeding, this would mean that she made good progress.

Hope this makes sense.

I have had battles with our school to get them to notice that one of my children has above expected attainment but below expected progress which means she is, in a sense underachieving for her(I realise she isn't ACTUALLY underachieving but she hasn't made the progress she should have done). it took me 2 terms before someone actually said "oh! I see what you mean, no that isn't right, she should be doing even better then". er yes.

It does make sense. I feel better about it now.

I think I was thrown by this on the report: "not all children can be high flyers but all can aspire to make good progress"

I misread that as meaning that to be a high flyer they had to be making good progress, when actually it doesn't mean that at all and by the sounds of it is actually quite difficult for the high flyers to make good progress! So how can they aspire to it?!

It would probably help if good progress was called improved progress or something instead

I think improved progress makes it sound like they were making poor progress before and are now making better progress though.

It might just be better if they explained the difference between progress and attainment properly.

We got our dd's report today. Also year 1.

Unlike last year there was no mention of expected/achieving/exceeding.
I wonder why?!

Ps the phonics test results were there though

Yeah the phonics test you can score full marks in despite having started school with no phonics knowledge and still not be making good progress in reading

My dd got 33/40 which was surprising as I thought she would score higher but hey ho she passed and I'm pleased.

Still wondering why our report hasn't contained the targets though...

My ds just got expected for reading in his reception report despite being on green band with comments about how good his understanding and recall of the text is and how he can use it to discuss other issues in context. I can only assume they have high expectations as he is one of only 4 to have reached green in his class ! I know he's doing ok which is what matters.