What do you make of these results? Are they credible?

[ListersSister]

DD's school (infant, state) does well in league tables and Ofsted reports. It is a good school, with a relatively middle class intake (although not exclusively so).

The results for level 3's (ie well above national average) at KS1 seem impressive even given the demographic. Below are the results - first column is the school, second column is the national average....

Speaking & listening 48% 22%
Reading 54% 26%
Writing 29% 13%
Maths 49% 22%
Science 48% 23%

Bearing in mind these are teacher assessments, do you believe they can be accurate? Surely they are too good to be true? Does anyone know how carefully they are moderated? Or should I be pleased that the teachers seem to do so well by the children?

KS1 irrelevant IMO.

KS2 more important.

They must be right. If not they would be setting themselves up for a massive fall at KS2 and ofsted would be on their backs.

Tis only an infant school, so to the school, these are the results that count.

The whole of this post should be preceded by a big APPARENTLY...

Thing is - they are teacher moderated, and what keeps most schools on track is that if they inflate their results it puts them down the league tables at KS2 - as they look at improvement since KS1.

Seeing as they don't have a KS2, they don't have the same moderating pressures as KS1 and KS2 schools.

Do they feed a particular KS2 school? If they do I would look at their results and judge the school on other factors at KS1 - like ethos, and "feel" over grades. The ofsted report will also give a guide to the quality of teaching and ethos.

How do you have the figures for the school?
KS1 results are not published.
Were they provided to you by the school?

Feel sorry for the Junior school these children feed in to. They will have a lot of pressure to produce Level 5s at KS2.

This is the school that my dd attends. We were given these figures last week when we got their end of term reports. The school does feed one specific junior school. The KS2 results there are also above average, but not double the average like the KS1 are .

Ah, now in our all through infant and junior school, the Y6 results are more like double the Y2 results. They get to show more added value that way.

Those results do seem high, particularly writing and maths. Of course, results do vary by cohort and this could be an exceptionally able cohort.

For comparison, our very good largely middle class school had the following Level 3 results over the last 2 years (2007 figure first, then 2006):

Reading: 28% 37%
Writing: 14% 24%
Maths: 33% 29%
Science: 44% 51%

We haven't received this year's results yet, but I do know that only 9 children of a cohort of 60 were predicted Level 3 in writing.

Ours are

Reading 56%
Writing 29%
Maths 55%
Science 91%
Speaking and Listening 65%

They are moderated by a panel of local infant schools - borderline 2/3s are discussed individually.

Ours don't look so impressive now:

Speaking And Listening - 19%
Reading - 35%
Writing - 15%
Maths - 31%
Science - 35%

Ours are:

speaking and listening 47%
reading 50%
writing 30%
maths 27%
science 20%

I am really surprised by this - I thought the national average for 3s was 35% ish. I should have been more impressed by my ds's report!

Well, interesting to know that other schools have got similarly good results too. Does anyone know how they are checked (aside from the panel of local schools)?

I asked DD if she had heard the word SATS and she shook her head - which is a definite plus too

Why not - they are externally moderated as well.

By the LEA (or what ever it is now)

wow are those the national averages - like seeker I should have been more impressed by DS1's report,

Ah Cazzy, so they are externally moderated? If that is the case, I shall assume that they are credible, and a credit to the school...
What does this mean for KS2 - what will the level 3 children be expected to get then?

WEll they are supposed to go up 2 sublevels a year...but don't forget they could have been pushed or be just a level3 so they may not make as good progress, plus there is a dip between key stages...but I would guess I would expect them to get a 4a or a 5.

I used to work in a junior school, where the feeder infant school often had results like this. It was a total nightmare. The school assessed the children very high and when they went into Yr 3 (with a very good teacher) they appeared to make very little progress. We had to set ridiculously high targets for these children which were impossible to achieve. The infants school came out very well on it's statistics and and of course all the parents rated the school very highly. We came out very badly and the parents felt that we weren't doing a good job. At Year 6 the results can't be bumped up because they are externally marked. Infant schools results are often much higher than primary schools Yr2 results which tend to be more realistic.

I used to work in a junior school, where the feeder infant school often had results like this. It was a total nightmare. The school assessed the children very high and when they went into Yr 3 (with a very good teacher) they appeared to make very little progress. We had to set ridiculously high targets for these children which were impossible to achieve. The infants school came out very well on it's statistics and and of course all the parents rated the school very highly. We came out very badly and the parents felt that we weren't doing a good job. At Year 6 the results can't be bumped up because they are externally marked. Infant schools results are often much higher than primary schools Yr2 results which tend to be more realistic.