Primary level English - greater depth but lots of errors?

[JumpinJellyfish]

DS (summer born) is going into year 4 in his state primary. He has always got Greater Depth across the board throughout his time at school, including for writing (which I thought was difficult to get) and including at the end of year 3. I was looking through his English book recently and was pretty surprised to see that his writing is actually what I would consider to be quite poor? He has good handwriting and excellent vocabulary but it’s riddled with basic SPG errors - is that normal for a greater depth Year 3?! He always gets full marks in spelling tests (also brought home his spelling test book) but it doesn’t seem to carry over into his actual writing. In comprehension his answers aren’t given in full sentences and are sometimes wrong. He will spell things incorrectly where they are included in the text.

I have no idea of the standards of other kids at this age/what is expected, and English was very much my thing as a child (did an English lit degree in the end) so appreciate I may be expecting too much but it doesn’t feel like it.

DS comes across as a bright boy - curious, confident, lots of ideas; he is excellent at maths and a gifted musician - I wonder whether his teacher has just assumed he’s at this level for everything? He’s in a class of 30 and I know they must be stretched.

We had been wondering whether to try for grammar on the strength of his school reports but this is really making me question it. Is it worth a discussion with the school? And how best can we help him with his English?

Has he done any standardised tests in English, and can you ask for the results?
There’s no need for comprehension answers to be in full sentences - it can waste so much time doing it the old fashioned way where you have to copy out half the question before writing the answer - but how much of a problem errors are will depend on how challenging the text is. You wouldn’t want the teacher to give him something so easy that he gets everything right. As for writing, there are three areas it will be marked on: basic skills such as SPAG; text organisation and paragraphing; and creativity, including originality and vocabulary. If your son is great at the latter two but weaker at the first he could still be GD, but he could well have something to work on there. SPAG is the easiest aspect of English for you to help him with at home of course.
Why don’t you ask for a chat with his teacher about these things?

Greater depth for writing is assessed on the quality of his extended writing, not on answers to comprehension questions.

Teachers will be using best judgement and there are teacher assessment frameworks that can be used to show what a pupil can do (very much a focus on what they can do rather than can’t do).

Some reading for you :
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/key-stage-2-teacher-assessment-guidance/key-stage-2-teacher-assessment-guidance#assessing-English-writing

And this may be similar to a form the teacher uses (we use similar):
https://www.beem.org.uk/Pages/Download/4026f6d5-9776-4b78-915e-13e50fa628f1/PageSectionDocuments

Thank you for the replies and links - I will have a look at these. I don’t know whether he has done any standardised tests but will ask.

We’ve been quite hands off at home because school has always been so positive about him and he doesn’t get much homework (of course we read a lot), and I’ve realised I don’t really have a good insight into what he’s up to. We’ve been doing a holiday diary over the summer and he’s been quite reluctant to do it!

Could you give examples of what you consider to be basic SPaG errors? As a teacher I would expect a greater depth child to be making few SPaG errors, but if their writing is exceptional and their only weakness is spelling (rather than punctuation/grammar) then I would likely still give the greater depth.

@fieldsofice it’s everything - some incorrect use of full stops, incorrect apostrophe use (“lot’s”, “would’nt) and silly spelling mistakes like “mabye” and “verey” - which are obviously common words he should know. But then he’s getting full marks in spelling tests with words like “conscious” and “scientist”. Baffling really.

It's hard to say anything confidently without seeing a piece of your DC's writing, but if there are frequent errors with full stops, I'm surprised he was given greater depth.

Yes, exactly! He does know to use a capital after a full stop, but very often he will run 2 sentences together with no punctuation, or will use a comma where there should be a full stop (or in fact a colon/semi colon but not expecting him to have mastered those!).

He has a brilliant vocabulary and is really creative, so his creative/extended writing is very lively and interesting, but the basics are definitely not there. His teacher loved him and I wonder if she overlooked some stuff because of her general impression of him.

Do you think I should say something to his new year 4 teacher? Or just try to work on it with him at home?

And also, is it normal for a child who is otherwise bright to make these kinds of mistakes? It doesn’t make sense to me that he is so high achieving in other respects and then hasn't grasped the absolute basics of grammar/writing, especially given how much he reads.