Levels at end of yr 7..don't really understand them

[barbie007]

My DD has just finished year 7 at a state comp. She's got 5a for maths, 6c science and 6c for english. I think that's good but is it very good? Or just average/slightly above average? She left primary school with all level 5s so I wonder how much progress there's been in one year.

I would say that 6C at the end of Year 7 is well above average. The expected attainment for the end of Key Stage 3 (Year 9) is level 5/6.

In an ideal world (as defined by our great leaders) a child will make 2 levels of progress in the KS3 years. So if they start at a L5 in Y7, you would hope that they will be L7 by the end of KS3 (Y9). So your dd is definitely above average for English and Science!

Maths, I don't know - depends what she came in on? I would presume 5c, in which case the two sub levels of progress are also good.

People tend to dismiss the sub levels - but they're significant.

Well done your dd. Have a quick google to understand what happens at each sub level.

Thank you both, it's clearer now.I've tried googling it before but end up even more confused!
I could see the progress for science and english as she went up one level but was dissappointed with the maths as she was the same level as she left primary school. But yes, she probably left with a 5c and has moved up 2 sub levels.

Am I right in thinking that by the end of yr 8 she should achieve a 6a for english and science and a 6b for maths? That's 2 sub levels per year?

People dismiss sublevels because they're made up. You can't google what happens at each sublevel because they're not defined. The difference between one sublevel and the next is simply a mark in a test. If a student just scrapes into the set of marks defined as a 'level 5' for that assessment, they'll get a 5c. If they're in the middle it'll be a 5b and closer to a 6 will be a 5a.

Given that the marking bands are quite narrow, a few marks is the only difference between 'making expected progress' and 'underachieving'. Which could be caused by misreading a big question, having a bad day etc.

Levels are designed to measure progress over a key stage, not over a year.

The 2 sublevels thing a year annoys me. Kids don't progress in a linear fashion and their progress can't be measured in an exact way. Kids go up and down whole levels from one topic to the next and that's fine.

I thought level 7 at end of year 9 was slightly higher than expected.... Expected being 5/6.

no, expected is 5...above expectations is 6 and 7

6 is expected at the end of year 9, here. (Kent)

The sublevels are too defined!

I'm a secondary maths teacher and while there are NC level descriptors for what is a level 5 or level 6 topic, there is nothing official that says mastery of a particular topic gives you a level 5a over a 5b. It is all about marks on tests. Even the old KS3 SATs papers only had official level thresholds with no sub level breakdown so schools had to come up with their own.

Secondary English here - the sub levels for us show how a skill is developing.

All utter tosh though.

National expectations used to be 4 at end KS2, 5 at end KS3. Then came the introduction of 'three levels of progress' which is a load of old bollocks and so to be on track, a child with L4 at KS2 should be achieving a 6 by end KS3 and a C at GCSE. Hence going from average to above average in three years, then back to average again.

Dont get me started on sublevels!! Barbie007 those levels are fine, don't worry. If they are not then school will let you know! Dd is very able and has had her report this week. She has just finished year 8. Her targets are high as they were last year. She gets 7A and 8 for all subjects apart from pe and dance. So her targets are all set at 7A apart from pe and dance and in art she got 7C so she had a red mark against it to say it is "lower than expected blah blah blah". Dd very sensitive and was a little upset. Why do they do these sublevels? Dd thinks she should have got a 7B at least as her work was marked 7A and 7B in class so i do see where she is coming from. Did the school really have to say lower than expected? Dd is quite a perfectionist and hated the fact she had all green marks and one red. Hello, but i think her marks are still high for her age? She is still 12!! They dont seem to take any of it into consideration.

Why do they do these sublevels? Because levels measure progress over a Key Stage, and levels need to be reported at the end of each Key Stage but schools have a desperate need to micromanage progress and can't deal with not knowing exactly where the students are in the intervening time. It's unacceptable apparently to have little Johnny on a level 5 at the start of Y7 and still on a level 5 at the end of Y7 (which is fine) because how does that show that he's learned anything? And parents will kick off.

Hence sublevels, which the school decides how to allocate and which hold no actual official meaning.

I have to say that I have less of a problem with sublevels assigned due to an end of year exam where 5c means 'just got a level 5' and 5a means 'nearly got a level 6' as a marker of how they did on that exam but it does make me uneasy knowing that assigning level thresholds is an imprecise science (look how they don't decide grade thresholds for GCSE exams until after the exam so if the exam turns out a bit harder from the results than previous years they can lower the boundaries, and that's only for whole grades, not even sublevels) how much emphasis schools, and from looking at threads on MN, parents give to these sublevels which are really just a bit shit.

Then we have an insistence in some schools of allocating national curriculum levels to individual pieces of work, which is just utter nonsense. They are not designed for that in the slightest.

And my school, which previously used to be quite sensible about things like levels say that teachers have to give a current level that a student is working at now on each report sent out in the year. There are 3 reports per year. Students are 'expected' (and this is bollocks too, btw) to make two sublevels' progress per year. So at some point in the three reports they're not going to make any progress, again not looking good.

Do you know how I assign sublevels on reports? At the start of the year I copy what they got in the exam the previous summer if it's really early in the year (cue threads on here saying they haven't made any progress with the new teacher!). If they have excellent test scores, I bump them a sublevel. Next report, bump them a sublevel. Come the summer I hope to god that the exam results show more progress than I've artificially bumped them in the year and that I won't have to actually put them down a sublevel because parents don't like this either.

We have only been given levels at end of year 9. Up to then no levels or targets given to parents. In progress reviews we are simply given positioning in the year - 1 being top 20% and 5 or 6 the bottom 20%.

Obviously we can look at books for marks or levels - some teachers use levels and some grades. I hate those levels - my year 1 dd2 came out with levels this term.... I don't want to know!