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?

Is she one of the older ones in the year?

So mrz, how do you assess children who are not in YR2 or YR6?
I thought mastery programme meant master the each skill expected for year group = expected, and be able to do more = greater depth.
If there aren't any national expectations for each year group, how can teacher assess children to working towards, expected or working at greater depth?

Expectations have increased. Children have to know more at a younger age.
Schools can choose the method they use to assess data. Nothing is perfect though and constant change makes the job harder.
Children are now expected to learn ' at a deeper level' so that too will affect what level they are assessed at.

"So mrz, how do you assess children who are not in YR2 or YR6" the answer is any way you want to

So are you saying you can give a child "working at the greater depth" for working "at" the level of age related expectation, if you wanted to, not to consider what is needed to achieve greater depth criteria on programme of study? Even more confused.

I'm saying every school is doing it differently which is why these labels are useless unless your child is at the end of a Key Stage when there is a set of criteria they must meet for expected or GDS. this criteria isn't the same as the programme of study.

I should add there isn't a greater depth in the programme of study just curriculum content.

In years 1,3,4 and 5 you can give a child anything you like!

In year 2 and 6 not so much

So that means, even if the op's dd didn't get exceeding this year, means she could have got exceeding from different teacher? Nothing really to do with how she achieved against age related expectations?

Here's the extract from the National Curriculum :

The programmes of study for English are set out year-by-year for key stage 1 and two-yearly for key stage 2. The single year blocks at key stage 1 reflect the rapid pace of development in word reading during these two years. Schools are, however, only required to teach the relevant programme of study by the end of the key stage. Within each key stage, schools therefore have the flexibility to introduce content earlier or later than set out in the programme of study. In addition, schools can introduce key stage content during an earlier key stage if appropriate. All schools are also required to set out their school curriculum for English on a year-by-year basis and make this information available online.

So as long as everything from yr 3-6 is taught by year 6, it can be taught in any year group in KS2

Irvine,

I think your confusion comes about because you are conflating 'teaching input' with 'assessment of output'.

So the National Curriculum states what must be taught in each year group - this is reasonably prescriptive for maths, ludicrously sparse for, say, Art. That is the 'teaching input' side.

Except in year 2 and year 6, the NC is completely silent on exactly what the child should be able to do as a result of this input, ie how much of the content they must be able to reproduce, and exactly at what level they should display the skills taught. Any assessment by schools - usually created by setting out a 'roadmap' between Year 2 and Year 6, looking at the year group curriculum and sticking a damp finger in the air to decide to exactly what level each skill must be shown - is therefore made up.

So while the coverage is set out in the NC, how to assess what the child has done with / learned from this input is not.

There ARE no age related expectations in yrs 1,3,4,5! Schools or indeed teachers can set their own expectations and then decide what is required to be secure/exceeding but that's it!

Sorry, cross-posted - most schools work hard to ensure that assessment done by different teachers in the same year group is the same, by internal moderation against the school's internal assessment procedure.

However, it is entirely possible that work assessed as 'exceeding' in one school could be assessed as 'expected', or even 'towards expected', in another, because except for y2 and Y6 there are no national standards for assessment.

We have been told yes by our school. At such a young age try not to worry as there is time to blossom!

In Year 2 and Year 6, there is a prescribed standard children have to reach. In each of the other years, there is a programme of study that must be taught.

It stands to reason, that you can't teach 4 years' worth of study in 1 year, but each school is free to decide how it goes about teaching and assessing the subjects and materials to enable children to demonstrate that they have met the required standard at the end of years 2 and 6.

For each of reading, writing and mathematics, there are key performance indicators, which are broken down into strands of learning. For example, within writing, there is 'handwriting' as a strand. Each strand is assessed separately.

In my DD's school, children are assessed quarterly, and can either be 'Not on track' to meet expected standard, 'Close to' expected standard, 'Secure' in expected standard or 'Beyond' expected standard.

In their reports, we get a grid which shows each strand of each subject, and the assessment that was given at each assessment point (1,2,3, end of year) and the final assessment given against their Key Performance Indicator for each strand.

Interestingly, DD3 has spent most of the year Beyond in one strand of maths, but her KPI is still secure. Yet she has spent all year Secure in handwriting, but her KPI is Beyond, so the criteria must be very specific in her school. At the end of the day, it makes no difference to her at all.

Ok, thank you, I think I finally got it. Thank you spaniel, cant and mrz , for being so patient with me!

Some if you are getting frustrated with mrz but in my view she's one of the few people pointing out the accurate but seemingly bonkers nature of the state of play currently regarding ongoing pupil assessment. There is no right way it's a morass.

It's probably worth saying that ever when there ARE national standards, as there were for Y6 Writing last year, difference in implementation in different areas of the country can still lead to huge inconsistencies in the awarding of 'expected'/ 'greater depth'.

For the Y6 ending in 216, there were children who in 1 county were awarded Expected, who would have got Towards in another local authority and Greater Ddepth in a third .. this lead to wholesale retraining of moderators this year, and a proposed change in the goalposts to 'best fit' (rather than 'everything must be ticked') assessment in future years.

We go to moderation meetings for each year group with other schools in our geographical area. every school has it's own view of what needs to be achieved to be working towards/at/exceeding, some schools don't have an exceeding ( you either have it or you don't!) some schools have 3 levels per year group, some have 6 ( we have 5!)

We had a child join us assessed as a 4A, which to us means advanced in year 4 and working almost at yr 5 level, we were amazed when she was very poor indeed, we then asked the previous school which had a 4 point scale per year group with 4 being lowest level and 1 the top, so 4A was the very first level for the year group and meant she was working well below standard! It's a nightmare, we now assess every child as soon as they walk through the door!

The worst example I've met is a school who were awarding expected and GDS by October based on the fact the child/ren could do the sixth other PoS taught that half term, ignoring the fact that they still needed to be taught most of the curriculum.

Sicko, no no no, I don't get frustrated with mrz. I love her, adore her, respect her, and admire her. I know she is one poster who never abandon anybody who needs help.

Mrz, my ds got GDS in October for maths this year...

Ok so while Yr 2 assessment is based on national standards, Yr 3 assessment is dependent upon the school and the teacher as there's no nationally recognised mechanism for assessment?

I don't think she's being given work this year as difficult as she was last year. So maybe that's the point I should raise with the teacher. When I've raised this before I'm told they have to cover the syllabus and so have to go through all the easier stuff. Last year her teacher still managed to extend though, so why not this year?

Thank you both
I know I annoy some people by my bluntness and persistence but I'm afraid I'm too old to change now and I mean well.

Workshytop the PoS what they should teach and it should build on what's been taught previously.