Quick question, what is "working within level 2"?

[verygreenlawn]

Ds1 is in Year 1 - had a note home a few weeks back to say they are doing assessments in maths and english but no further details.

Just had parents evening and his teacher said he's making good progress and "working within level 2". What is this - is it SATs? I thought that was for Year 2. She also said they're going to try the more able dcs with a slightly tougher assessment in a couple of weeks time to give us a better idea.

School is quite low key on assessments generally, they've never mentioned assessments before or given any explanation, so just wondering if anyone can explain? Thank you!

The schools have to keep running assessments of the capability of each child and their individual progress. The levels are the same as the sats levels but they aren't the sats. They are just the standard of measuring progress.

The official SATs assessements where the results are reported to the Govt are in Y2 and Y6 but the grading/level system is used throughout.

All teachers will have to give children a level for Maths and English to measure progress. Working within Level 2 would IME mean that he is in the middle of Level 2. It is not a SAT score but levels are used on a day to day basis to make assessments. The tougher assessment will be to find out whereabouts in level 2 your DS is working and what they need to learn to progress further up to a Level 3 as the difference between the bottom of a level and the top can be quite big. As a teacher myself (admittedly secondary) sounds like good practice to me. Level 2 in Year 1 sounds very impressive to me. We have some who come to us in Year 7 who are only Level 3 in Maths!

Ah OK thanks, I was a bit confused as to why they would be using terminology that sounded a bit like SATs when I thought they didn't do SATs till Year 2, but it makes sense that it's part of an ongoing assessment. Thank you!

If a Y1 child is 'working within L2' then it just means they're working at a level above the national average. The average Y2 child is level 2B. Speaking as a Y2 teacher, I wouldn't worry about whereabouts in L2 your child is working, as most children achieving L2 in Y1 will be targetted for L3s in Y2. Sometimes strange things happen though - children develop at different rates and slip back or pull ahead, so nothing's set in stone. (Thus spake a Y2 teacher tearing her hair out about children who haven't achieved their expected level 3s!!!)

Thanks trickerg, all sounds fine, I was just a bit unsure because the school tends to make quite a big thing of NOT getting carried away with testing at a young age. Which is great from the point of view of not stressing the dcs out (and one of the reasons we liked the school in the first place) - but it means as parents we have very little idea what they're talking about when they DO decide to test!