High school Tracking Reports

[Backchat86]

Anyone understand them properly. I just can't get my head round them.

What year is your DC in?

She's in 4th year and just about to sit her prelims in Dec.

The prelim results will tell her and you a lot more about where she is relative to where she needs to be than the tracking report (it attempts to map effort to ability based on achievement and then produces an exam target).

If the actual prelim results are below the tracking target then the implication is the pupil should have worked harder to revise for the prelim.

Not an exact science at my DC's school and different teachers / subjects seem to set targets less / more optimistically depending on their approach to motivating. (should be a covering letter explaining how the targets 1-9 map to A-E in Nat 5 results, roughly corresponds to banding boundaries - so 1 is high A and so on downwards)

Thank you for your reply,at present my head is spinning.my daughter has a maths tutor who gives regular feedback as well as written reports and my daughter seemed to been doing well however target report states no grade given and working towards a D!! I contacted the school to be told not to worry to much as class average was 28% apparently the same class last year at this time 25% with 65% going on to pass their exams.Im not a teacher however this worries me A LOT.
All comment very welcome.

Yep that would worry me but sounds like the school may be approaching it differently from ours - seem to be setting extra hard tests to give the DC a kick up the backside - not that I'm convinced that works for Maths.

Iirc from your thread in Secondary Education, you have a parents' evening coming up.

I'd raise your concern then, especially re maths. I'd do it positively, asking what specific concerns they may have and what you can do to support your dd/the school, over and above the tutoring you are already providing.

I agree with howabout - it does seem a strange way of "motivating" their pupils

I know it is difficult and time consuming for the schools to customise/add to CEMIS(?) which is what Glasgow uses. Ds' old school knew that its parents wanted more information to make it more useful. I can't remember what they did - I think they customised something so that they could include more info. But the most useful thing was still the Parents Evening, with the Tracking Report just highlighting where there might but not necessarily be concerns.

It's not something my DSs have ever had. Their interim report gives only a mark for effort and nothing else. I think even those scores can be quite arbitrary and subject to interpretation. Some teachers use it as an indicator of how hard the pupil is working regardless of how that is transferring into a likelihood of success. Others will use it as a benchmark to show ability/success regardless of whether any effort is being put in. Ime it's the prelim results and your own knowledge of your child that give the best information.

Teachers may be being asked what pupil would likely achieve if they sat the full exam tomorrow. Therefore a D with about half of the course (and a whole load of exam techniques and confidence ) still to go is perfectly reasonable and quite good.

My DDs school it's simply off or on track for Nat5 ( or whatever level) they're hoping to be presented at. Being off track doesn't mean they won't present them or that the teacher doesn't think they're capable of achieving a pass in the exam .