Year one report

[longshot]

How does yours look this year? I think the levels used to be 1a,1b 2a, 2b etc etc and this year the school have just gone with a letter (G - Working at greater depth across a range of concepts within ARE), S - Secure, works independently within ARE, D - Developing - Can access ARE, needs support and direction and W - Working towards - needs support to access.) Progress across the year and Effort is scored separately.

Can anyone translate this into the 'old' system or is it impossible? Also we got a letter from school saying that this year standards have changed significantly (harder). We also get a progress rating per subject (1-3) and Effort (1-4). with 1 being the best / highest.

I

The old system is no longer, and each school now reports using it's own system I'm afraid so no there is no translation between what you have and the old letters.

There are no levels anymore, just age related expectations. If you google it I'm sure you could get a list of all the criteria so you can see what ARE look like.

In Y1 every school will be using different assessments and setting their own standards/expectations (there are no National expectations except in Y2 &Y6) so the only people who can give you an informed answer are the staff of your child's school I'm afraid.
The curriculum changed in 2014 so I'm not sure why they're saying that standards have changed this year.

Ours just has greater depth, expected level and working towards. It also has learning attitude- excellent, good, fair, needs to improve.

Will try and put more detail on this - forgive if you already know all this.

The old system was a continuous list so a child went up regardless of which year group they were in - they start at the bottom and continued up the same scale.
The new system is discrete - it is purely measured against that year group's list of targets. So WT, D, S, GD in relation to those targets only.

Ideal is that all children should be Secure in each year group.

Progress - children should go from the same band in Year 1 to Year 2 e.g. WT is Y1 and Y2, D is Y1 and Y2 etc. That should mean they are maintaining but not closing the gap between them and the list of expected things.

Great progress is when the go up a band...WT Y1 to D Y2, D Y1 to S Y2....they are getting closer to the expected standard.

I hope that helps and explains why you can't compare the old system to the new - the statements it is all judged on are very different and so it can't really be related! X

You'll have been told stabdards have changed because the statements between Reception and Year 1 are completely unlinked and stupid - they are assessed against completely different things so children's assessments often move weirdly/go down from EYFS to Y1.

Agree with PPs, if you have been told that 'this year' standards have changed, then that could either refer to the change from YR (Early Years Framework) to Y1 (National Curriculum) - the change that your child has gone through this year; or that the school internal standards for Y1 have changed. Regarding the latter, there is no national assessment framework for Y1. The national curriculum prescribes what needs to be taught across KS1, but only suggests what needs to be taught in Y1 and what in Y2. What is taught furthermore is not the same as what is learned - for the end of each Key Stage there are national expectations as to what ought to have been learned and how that is to be assessed, but this does not exist for the end of each school year. So schools are technically at liberty to teach more content in Y1 and take it easier in Y2 or vice versa; and when assessing at end of Y1, they can apply whatever standards/expectations they wish. So they might have really high expectations at Y1, which few children will achieve, and then many parents will be positively surprised when their kids do achieve the expectations at Y2. Or vice versa.
So if 'standards have changed' it could mean that the school has realised after several years of teaching to the new curriculum (since 2014) that Y2 is not enough to achieve the new expected standard for KS1 and have therefore moved more content down into Y1. So the actual teaching has changed, and with it the assessment standards. Or it could be that only the assessment standards have changed, if the school has realised over the past three years that their school internal assessments for Y1 have been overly optimistic, with many children achieving below what their Y1 assessments implied in their Y2 SATS (leading to concerned parents asking lots of questions). So they have raised their internal assessment standards for Y1 to better reflect how the children are likely to achieve in Y2 (which is nationally given).

We don't use the same system as lovely and for children still working towards Early Learning Goals in Y1 we would report against these. There is no reason schools can't have an assessment system that is a continuum because there is no national standard for Y1, 3,4, or 5 only for the end of each Key Stage. Only your school can tell you how they organise assessment.

We get High (H), Secure (S), Low (L) and then two for ppl working at the previous years curriculum. We also got effort grades for all subjects but maths and english, including homework.
Tbh in terms of effort grades though I mostly ignore them after fighting with the school all year about them not making any allowances for his dcd.

Tbh though also I think the H is pretty irrelevant too as for Reading and Maths he was already H at Christmas so after that he had no target.

tomorrowillbeachicken, I think schools also vary in how they use their 'grades': Some will cycle a child who is making normal progress through the grades over a school year. So an average child might start at Y4 - emerging, get to Y4 - developing by mid-year, and Y4-secure by end of year. A high achieving child in this case might get Y4 - developing at the start, and move through Y4-secure and Y4-mastered/embedded/whatever by the end. A school doing it this way (and without the option of giving grades from the year above) would be pretty silly not to have a few 'higher' grade levels so as to still be able to show (internally) progress for high achieving children.

Our school does it like this. Basically the child is measured against end-of-year standards throughout the year. So a child that was Y3-secure would move seamlessy to Y4-emerging. Because the child is now measured against end-of-Y4 expectations rather than against end-of-Y3 expectations.
But we have three or four levels of above-average gradings so able children just start a bit higher but still move up with each report.
I find it pretty arbitrary tbh - it is true that they haven't taught Y4 content yet at the beginning of the year, but that doesn't mean that a child can't do it yet. But as they haven't taught it yet, they also do not assess it, so a child can not be given Y4 - secure at the beginning of the year even if they are secure with all Y4 content in that subject. So even measuring against end-of-year expectations, some children should be getting 'secure' or more at the beginning of the year; but won't, because this 'hasn't been taught yet and therefore hasn't been assessed yet'.

However other schools will happily give a child Y4-embedded/mastered/whatever at the beginning of the year, if the child masters the topics covered so far in Y4. If the child continues to 'master' all topics covered in the year, they will continue to get 'mastered' in every report, which will not indicate a lack of progress - they will have been mastering more and more topics, so presumably making progress.

Both 'systems' have a problem when a child can do all or most of the end-of-year expectations at the beginning of the year already. The lack of assessing things 'not yet taught' remains. Wether the child cycles through dev-embedded-mastered or starts and ends with mastered - it is still possible that this child is making zero progress as they could do it all already at the beginning of the year, the only thing that is progressing is what is being assessed.

He started school knowing the curriculum and is self taught. Will do the same this year too. It's frustrating as he gets bored and frustrated.