Which school to believe

[Elisheva]

My DS(7) has just started junior school. He’s having a great time and really enjoys it.
In parents evening last night the teacher told me that they had been assessing the children and that they had some concerns about my son, mainly related to speech, language and communication. His reading is a year or so behind and his spelling was listed as

I am sorry for happened.
If it was me, I would concentrate on working with new school and to support him. At least new school is doing everything they can to help.
I can understand you are angry, but negative feeling isn't good for you or your ds.
I would use all the energy for him to get appropriate help and support.

I suspect that the junior school are well used to getting pupils from the infant school where their supposed ability has been milked for all its worth. So it could be that the infant school are pushing up their level whilst the junior school is trying to moderate your expectations downwards.
Having said that it will be far better to work with the junior school and getting in the interventions now will hopefully lead to a rapid improvement such that he will catch up with his peers.

Sounds like infant school grade inflation to me. Good that your junior school are all over it though. Definitely work with them as pp have said.

My daughter is a year 3 teacher, and she complains every year about the difference between age related in year 2 and the skills needed in year 3. There does seem to be a mismatch in the assessments at this important transition.

Your son's new teacher seems to be on the ball, and will make sure that he has all the help he needs. I'm sure, with your support, he'll make progress.

I agree that it looks like grade inflation from the infant school. Their KS1 SAT's are marked in house and reported to the DfE unlike KS2 SATs. Even Ofsted recognised this in their latest inspection briefing to inspectors.

I found my ds infant school weren't to accepting of the need to support ds. They were great at complaining about him though . Well til the day I said stop complaining if you are t willing to do something about it to support him.
Juniors were great.

I think infant schools can still just about get away with the 'it's their age' thing.

I also know when levels still existed that a level 3 infant level was for children who had completed level 2. Except to be a solid level 3 at year 3 you had to be a 3B. So they got children exceeding who were just working on level 3 curriculum and because expected progress was 1.5 au levels a year many would look like they made no progress in year 3.
I also know levels can be inflated because the things expected of year 2 are different. So if they can write through rote learning 3/4 sentences using different openers and connectives they are achieving.
In year 3 they are expected to write far more for a wider variety of purposes - and when they can't transfer the skills they fall into a different bracket.

Junior school sounds great so I would forget what happened in last and focus on working with them to help ds improve.

If your ds has speech, language and communication needs then I would ask for a referral to SALT straight away (you may be able to self refer). No point waiting on that one!

I agree with all the others.
Is is infuriating, but I'd try to direct all energies towards working wiht the junior school to support him now.
Oh, and it's a horrible job for the Yr3 teacher to have to break this news to some of the parents, so its really worth while letting them know how appreciative you are that finally someone has recognised what you instinctively knew.