Making sense of curriculum levels and reports.

[SayWhatty]

Dc1 is in 3rd year. Just got the first report of the year. Does anyone find these curriculum levels confusing? Is Level 4, progress one normal for the start of 3rd year? Most subjects are level 4, progress 2 or 3.
In math she is level 3, progress 3 - but always scoring highly in tests. Very hard to make sense of the bland, generic comments!

Copy and paste for all students I’d imagine. Despite me asking about test results etc throughout my kids schooling I only found out how well they were coping with subjects when the Nat 5 results came out. School were totally unwilling to give a view at any stage of primary or secondary. It was frustrating as it made picking subjects for nat5 very difficult.

If your reports are like the ones we have to write, the level is the one currently being worked on. I’d expect an academic child on track for N5 in S4 to be working at level 4 in S3. We have 4 progress levels - not achieving, achieving with support, achieving and expected to exceed level. Again, children on track to progress to national 5, I’d expect them to be achieving or exceeding level.

you’ve mentioned she’s scored highly on tests but do you know what set she is in or what level she is working at?

the copy and paste comment is incorrect. The way these reports are set up, it is a physical impossibility to copy and paste! I know I sit with my mark book and data from previous years in order to make judgements. So that comment is not only unhelpful but unfair @Bluebattery as is your comment regarding progress updates. We are in contact fortnightly with parents of all our pupils. Many don’t engage or simply don’t care.

Agree with @ForUmberFinch except that in my authority, the level given is what they have already achieved so it’s quite rare for us to be able to give a level 4 at this stage in S3.

It is quite literally impossible to copy and paste on our reporting system too.

Thanks all. I'm fairly sure there's copy and pasting as a couple of teacher comments referred to my DC both by her name and by another child's name.
The school refuse to discuss levels and sets. However in past parents' nights teachers say she is bright and will do well.
We receive no contact from the school apart from these brief termly reports and one parents night per year with 5 minute apps, and no room to meet all Subject teachers.

Does the report letter not come with some kind of key or guide as to what each progress level means? Surely they need to have an explanation of what the numbers represent?

The curriculum levels can be found online but should really be listed on the report as well.
https://education.gov.scot/parentzone/curriculum-in-scotland/curriculum-levels/
In what way do you mean that they refuse to discuss levels? Surely if they've told you which level your child is working at and that they score highly in tests then he/she is doing well?

If there is another child named on the report I think you should contact the school asking to confirm that the information is correct for your child as there is another child's name attached to some of the comments.

In contact with all your pupil’s parents fortnightly? Where on earth do you teach that you have time for that? I have a DC with ASN and am lucky to get any subject specific feedback at the termly review meetings. Five minutes at parents evening is our only real feedback. I can certainly understand how Nat 5s can appear your first real measure of achievement.

The reports are mostly generic ‘here’s what we are working on’.

ds is 3 years out of school now, but he had "learner conversations" with each of his subject teachers every couple of months or so. They would be given the sheet in registration and take between classes that week and teachers would fill in during class time, going around pupils desk while they were doing work.

They were given a working grade and target grade, the grades aligned to 1-2 for an A, 3-4 for a B etc. According to ds the maths teacher came to him and said he was giving him a target grade of 3, and ds said he wanted an A so the teacher just said ok and changed it to 2 (no-one gets a 1 he says).

So we didn't pay much attention to them anyway - focused on how he felt in the classes and once we got to December how he was with test questions from revision books/sheets and past papers at home. I supported him a lot in the run up to NAT5s on how to identify gaps/weaknesses, how to study etc, but then he was pretty much self sufficient at Higher.

Goodness. Fortnightly! We get one school report a year and absolutely no contact whatsoever apart from that. We tried contacting one teacher in a subject that one child was getting increasingly stressed about, but it was 8 days before they replied and by then we’d been able to get a tutor to help. Fortnightly??? Is there some sort of contact / feedback level Scottish teachers are supposed to be working to? I’d love more regular feedback but I thought what we got was the norm.

DS is doing Nat 5s and we have got the target grades and the working grades as well, as Blanketpolicy said. This is the grade they are expected to achieve and where they are currently working. DS has ones and twos, though, so I am not sure why they would not be given.

This is separate from the levels, which are the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework levels as far as I understand it - Nat 5 is SCQF Level 5.

https://www.sqa.org.uk/filesccc/GuidetoScottishQualifications.pdf

I can’t imagine seeing the teachers fortnightly to be honest, I would rather they got on with teaching and spoke directly to DC by secondary school. There are various information sessions about the curriculum and opportunities to visit subjects during the school year as well as the parents’ evening and I think that is perfectly sufficient.
I keep an eye on homework and things with Satchel but I expect DS to manage his own schedule, it’s more that we chat about what he is doing and I check now and then that he is up to date with what needs done.

What is reasonable to expect though? Because one report a year seems a bit poor by what those above have said. Would it be reasonable to ask for expected bat 5 grades at Nat 5 choices time for instance. Because I would have found this helpful but was made to feel I was being unreasonable in asking. And contact more than one report and a parents night would be good.