Disappointed with school report, is it harder now to get exceeding?

[workshyfop]

DD is in Year 3. Throughput KS1 she was exceeding in most subjects. This year though her report had her at expected for most, and exceeding in only one subject. In previous years her teachers seemed to have a good handle on her abilities but this year I kind of feel she's not had much attention. Unfortunately she will be in the same class with the same teachers next year. When I asked her teacher why she hadn't done as well this year, I was told the standard had increased. Is this right, in the last year? AIBU to be concerned about next year?

Hmm, let me see. Should you be concerned that your small child, at 7 or 8 is either on target or above average at school this year? Errr, no.

At infants age kids developed at different rates, some kids learn to read much earlier than some eg some learn to read fluently in reception and some it doesn't click until in year 2. So if for example they were expected to leave to read in year 1 then the early reader would be exceeding but by the time you get to year 3 everyone has caught up so would be at the expected stage for thier age.

So in infants they are judged not on thier skills - ability to read, blend phonics, sight read etc, likewise with maths - the skills to add, take away etc etc

When they get to juniors most children will have learn the skills for learning and they are then judged more on thier knowledge and ability to apply the skills.

It could just be that you DD was just a quick learner in infants so ahead of where they expected her to be and now she is in juniors is working to the expected level (which is much more in depth and requires a lot more work)

The goal posts are ever-moving and children are expected to be able to do more and more by the government. Soon they will have to have a basic understanding of nuclear physics, Chaucer and Trigonometry, play the piano, speak conversational Latin and be able to explain how an ox bow lake is formed before they can achieve the early learning goals at the end of Reception. 😞😱😬

Also, children do plateau from time to time.

And clearly I would get 'working towards' for my grammar and spelling - using phone and it keeps freezing up and not showing me what I'm typing!!

Thanks for the reassurance. Magical one of the reasons I was questioning it was because she is able to do so much, especially in English, understanding grammar, how to construct a narrative etc. More than I ever learnt I in my 1980s comprehensive. I guess expectations are pretty high then!

While I agree with PPs that there are all sorts of reasons why a child may have gone from exceeding in Y2 to expected in Y3, you did ask the teacher exactly this and in effect she fobbed you off.
She did not explain any of those good reasons, she did not say which one of them it was in your child's case. Instead she made a claim that is not true - in answer to your question, no there have been no shifts in expectations since last year. Your child did the new Y2 SATS and was working to the new NC, just as she was this year. I understand it is indeed harder to get 'exceeding' or equivalent in Y3 now than it was two or three years ago, but not harder than it was last year.

It does not sound as if you need be concerned about your child's learning, but I WOULD be concerned about why the teacher fobbed you off like that. If there was a perfectly benign reason, she could have told you it; the fact that she resorted to an 'excuse' indicates that the real reason is not quite so benign (albeit you still do not know what it is). It may be that the teacher does not 'get' your child and therefore does not see how able she is. It may be that the teacher is weak at challenging/extending her most able children. Or something else. When somebody uses an 'excuse' that is not true, it does leave you wondering what it might really be - clearly the real reason is not something she feels comfortable sharing with you, presumably as it wouldn't reflect well on her.

If it were just one year with this teacher, I would shrug it off. A second year with her, would make me ask questions.

brill you have articulated my gut feeling. Not sure I can do anything about it however, as we've already been told the classes can't be changed

well, how can a child keep getting exceeding? once they have had it once, the expectations increase, so if she is getting meeting expectations, then the expectations were correct, if she keeps getting exceeding, then the expectations were incorrect. This is how it works at KS3, anyway.

( in some schools that is, not all, different schools grade differently)

user, at Primary level the expectations are 'age related' i.e. the expectations are the same for all children at the end of a school year, and independent of how they did in Y2. There are precise frameworks for what a child needs to be able to do in order to meet ARE (age related expectations) at the end of each Key Stage. So a child 'exceeding' in one year but 'expected' the next, has made less than a year's worth of progress.

However and this may be a point in OP's case, it is up to schools how to measure progress inbetween Y2 and Y6 I believe; although the NC proposes a 'course of study' for each year, I believe that schools can choose to teach things at different times/in different years, as long as they cover everything by the end of the Key Stage. So maybe your school OP has indeed moved some expectations down from Y4 into Y3, making it harder to 'exceed' in Y3.
But yet again, if that were the case, I would have thought the teacher would have explained in more depth, e.g. pointing out that it is harder at your school to achieve 'exceeding' in Y3 than in other schools but it is because they children have already been taught things that most other schools will only teach in Y4.

There aren't any national expectations for Years 1/3/4&5 only for the end of each Key Stage.

It shoukd not be harder in one school. Although a school can have individual discretion on assessment and reporting of progress, they should be using a system that is watertight - or how can you believe a word they say? If they are judging exceeding far too easily, imagine the fall-out at Y6 Sats and in an Ofsted inspection. Also any very high hurdles are inaccurate as well. Therefore accuracy and consistency is key.

The worrying thing to me is that DC has not made progress at the same rate so progress has effectively slowed because DC went into y3 ahead of expectations. This has not been built on or sustained. This could be down to over generous assessment at ks1. The y3 position could be accurate. The y3 curriculum obviously builds on the y2 curriculum and I would ask to see details of progress over the year in whatever form this school does it. Schools can use their own methods, a LA method or a bought in commercial method of plotting progress. Children do plateau and consolidate. However most schools do end up with constantly exceeding children but fluctuations can and do happen.

The national curriculum is year specific - or so I thought. If not, assessment and progress data is useless if you move school.

Ask your mom for your year 3 report card and see how relevant it is to your success or challenges.

Of course assessment and progress data is useless if you move schools! The only national assessment points are in year 2 and year 6, anything else is up to the school. They can asses/not assess however they want, have different criteria, different labels etc. Even if they use the same criteria ( eg yr 3 secure) HOW this is achieved/assessed can be completely different.

Welcome to assessment without levels!

"There aren't any national expectations for Years 1/3/4&5 only for the end of each Key Stage."

What do you mean, mrz? I thought they had clear expectations to aim for each year groups?

There are programmes of study for each year group but there are no national expectation about assessment .

"The national curriculum is year specific - or so I thought. If not, assessment and progress data is useless if you move school." Each school is free to set their own assessment and tracking criteria. They are all different

I really don't get you, then how on earth each teacher will be able to assess children against national expectations?
Are you saying the teacher can ignore the programmes of study(assume guide lines) and assess children how they like in those years?

Lots of good long answers but the short one as far as I've been told by my dcs school is that the expectations are now greater and as such fewer children will be exceeding them.

Surely it depends largely on whether the judgement in year 2 was accurate. In all honesty all these assessments are pretty meaningless since each school made ip their own assessments and criteria. If your dd is happy and is completing her work well then I honestly would not give a fig for these grades.

Children's learning curves don't follow a nice smooth line. At points their learning will slow down or plateau. It's nothing to be concerned about unless it continues to plateau. She is probably developing in other areas (physically, socially), so her academic progress has dropped off a bit. She's still meeting expectations so I wouldn't be worrying yet.

As MRZ says, every school can report progress however they like. And sats are only part of that. Our infant school assesses differently to us. One local secondary school has had to employ a teacher specifically to gets to grips with the different systems developed in the 30+ primary schools who send their children there in year 7. It is indeed, a nightmare.

"I really don't get you, then how on earth each teacher will be able to assess children against national expectations?" They can't because there aren't any unless the child is in Y2 or Y6.

"Are you saying the teacher can ignore the programmes of study" no I'm saying the programme of study is about content not about assessment .