Understanding standardised scores - increase of 11 points?

[Awcw1234]

My Y4 child is dyslexic. Last year she scored 80. This year she scored 91. Is this a good improvement? The reason I ask is because over these last few months, she has been seeing a specialist dyslexia tutor and I’m wanting confirmation it is helping as it is very expensive!

Sorry, this was for reading. Apparently this score means she is working within the Y4 curriculum. Does this mean she has met expectations? 91 seems low

No, it means she is working within the year curriculum but is not secure in it. That would need a score of over 100. However, 80 would be low within the previous year curriculum so it is a big improvement

Caveat! Schools will have their own views on where 91 would sit on a continuum. For us it is low within year group, some schools may have it high in previous year group. Similarly with 80.There is no definitive answer!

That's a great improvement. 80 is basically non-scoring, unfortunately - the majority of children would score a point or two by luck with tick box questions. Moving from 80 to 91 in a year shows great progress, and might also mean your child is properly cracking reading. It's not as typical as the leap children tend to take when they're younger, but I've seen a few children have a real breakthrough in Y4 and leaving primary as functional readers, which is really important.

80 is non scoring? Now this is where I’m confused. She isn’t great at Maths but she managed to get 25/25 on her MTC test yet for Maths, she scored 82 and is ‘working towards’. She wouldn’t have scored nothing on her Maths paper! Wish we were provided some guidance with these scores.

In KS2, 80 is the lowest score you can get on your SATS. 82 is likely a handful of correct answers across 3 papers, but if you know your times tables in Y4 that should pick you up a lot of marks so 82 seems very low. Anything below the expected standard but working above KS1 level is reported as Working Towards usually. I'd ask for more clarity - as a teacher, I'd be delighted at someone taking an interest in their child's progress.

Thank you. I’m due to have a meeting with the teacher next week so I’ll ask some questions. Does seem odd her maths score is so low when she got 25/25 on the MTC!

For Y3 and Y4 there are no national tests, so these will be your DD's school's own tests. It sounds like the scoring system is similar to the standardised scores for KS1 and KS2 SATs, but you will need to ask the school for more details.

You are referencing scaled scores in the KS2 SATS. OP is talking about standardised scores, which are not the same.

OP, I’ve done a rough conversion using the standardised to scaled score table we use at our school. FYI: I do not know if this is 100% accurate.
91 standardised = 102 scaled score.
82 standardised = 94 scaled score.

To pass the KS2 SATS, 100 is the score you need. She has achieved above that with her standardised score of 91. She is indeed working towards with a scaled score of 94 for maths. Don’t get confused between standardised and scaled scores as they are not the same. I do find it strange that the school are report standardised scores as they are not used for national data.

Fair enough. In my school they correlate.