Please help me get my son's school report in context!

[fridayschild]

DS1's report has boxes to indicate whether he is either at, below or above the expected level for a child at the end of Year 1. Does anyone know what this actually means?

If he was at the expected level all the way through his schooling, then by the time he comes to do his GCSEs, does that mean he would get 5 GCSEs at grade C or above? I think that is the government target.

If my PFB is not actually going to win an Olympic Gold followed by the Nobel Prize, I probably need to spend some time managing my own expectations! [Tongue in cheek emoticon] It is a lovely report by the way, I have read it to him and we are both very pleased with it.

Crikey I don't think you can extrapolate GCSE grades from a Tr 1 report !

Well I was just curious about what they all meant: how ambitious is the state for our children? How stretching are these targets? The other threads about school reports for big kids talk about different grades which our school hasn't used, so they don't help.

Our school gives number grades that are government regulated. It doesn't however tell us if that means how ahead/on target/behind our child is. We only know what it's meant to be as DH is a teacher...

Unfortunately, if they're doing it on a school level, it'll only be relevant to that school.

Oh and I'd read the comments more than the grades. Ours said DS was adequately able to do certain things (but not confidently) in the tick boxes and then his teachers had written how confident he was doing them in the comments box. We suspect that unless there's a real problem they just tick the 'average style' box....

Don't know about the extrapolation but IME the state isn't very ambitious at all when setting the expected levels at primary ages. At my DCs' school everyone seems to achieve the expected level but it is a smallish school so its not statistically representative of the whole population.
Have you had a word with the teacher ?

The teacher is off sick recovering from an operation. She dictated the reports before she went and called all the parents where she thought there was a problem or a discussion which needed to be had. DS1 did not fall into that group which is presumably good news. I have a lot of faith in this particular teacher and would trust her judgement. By the time all the reports got typed of course it was the end of term and no chance to ask the supply teacher or anyone else what it actually means.

The comments were very useful, thanks for recommending that randomtask.

I too doubt you'd get very reliable GCSE predictions from trying to extrapolate Year 1 results! So much can change in those early years and the subjects aren't really the same at GCSE level as they are in year 1.

5 Cs or more is the expected achievement - ie: what the government thinks is a minimum target for a typical child. Currently 65% children nationally achieve it. So I guess if around 65% are also achieving the year 1 'expected level' it might be reasonable to assume your child is 'on track' for the 5C GCSE threshhold if they continue to make the expected amount of progress. There is bound to be a lot of crossover between those above & below expected achievement between year 1 & 11 for all sorts of reasons though.

At the end of year 1 the average level is 1b or 1a in Literacy and Numeracy. Their level in year 1 would not give you any idea about GCSE levels.

I think these classifications are to do with Sats levels. Take the grades with a pinch of salt in yr 1. DS was marked slightly below in yr 1. A year later his marks are above average in every area.

The grades and predictions will be based on APS (Average Points Score) grades. Basically each sat level is worth three points. 2C- 13
2B- 15, 2A- 17 etc. These points scores are then analysed against trend graphs for 'national averages', 'local averages' and 'similar school' averages. The assessment software then take grades at certain key points (end of Y2, end of Y6, and sometimes end of each year group in summer temr), and track the point on the trend graph to where it might be at end of Y11 (ie GCSE)

It really is a load of bollocks, and it more about ticking boxes and creating evidence for inspections for the school than providing anthing useful for parents.

To make it even more confusing, the sat levels only apply to the curriculum taught. So, in Y2 Maths a child might get a 3c. But in Y3 that might drop to a 2A, since the Y2 curriculum does not include data handling or much in the way of shape and space. The same thing can happen in Y7 and again in Y10 as the curriculum quantity increases.