Teacher Advice Urgently Needed for SAT's 2012

[urbancupcake]

Would be grateful if the following could be explained as suffering from information overload:

For the first time last year I am aware that the writing aspect of the English was teacher accessed. Am also aware that some schools had their's externally marked, but believe it was still, for reporting purposes, ultimately classed as a Teacher accessed mark. Would really appreciate therefore, if he following questions could be explained:

1. If for performance tables the teacher accessed writing score was not used, how did they arrive at the child's level using the reading score only and where can I find a threshold table for that (all that I've been able to find 'combines' the writing TA with the reading score)?

1. How would secondary schools have received this information? Levels without the TA writing score? Or levels with the TA writing score? Or both?

1. If, hypothetically speaking, a child had a low reading score and a high writing score, and the writing score was not included in the reporting of the National Curriculum levels, does this mean they could have ended up with a lower level for English overall?

Thanks so, so much

I'm not really sure what you mean with any of that, and I've been teaching English for 23 years! I work in Wales with no SATs, so all levels are Teacher Assessed. It is impossible to arrive at an overall level without individual levels for Speaking and Listening, Reading and Writing as they are all worth the same at KS3. If the secondary school only got a reading level, and it was low, then they would probably have a look to see if the child needed support. Secondary schools tend not to have much trust of Primary school levels, whether TA or SAT, so it wouldn't have any long term affect on a child's set or future attainment.

We received from the primaries:

1. The official SATS, externally marked grade (reading)

2. The internal TA grade for writing

3. An overall grade - I don't know if this came from primaries, or whether it was a computer formula making a combination of the two.

We originally set on the basis of 1) as that's the only data we had at the time when doing the setting, but sets are always adjusted in Oct anyway.

Targets and so on are based on 3).

HTH

Thanks for getting in touch @Cardibach. I know it all sounded a bit confusing. It was more the answer that Casey sent is what U was looking for.

So thanks Casey for breaking that down, really, really useful. And just out of interest, is this info sent to you via RaiseOnline?

@Casey: Oops just one other thing, do you know how what formula/threshold table they used to derive at the English level using reading only as in your point 1?

Thanks again

Formula explained here

It was so arbitary that they decided to have separate levels for Reading, writing and the SPAG this year (new spelling/grammar test).

arbitrary

I've tried and failed to find the "official" threshold tables, it seems to have been archived from the dfe site, but I don't know where to. However, papers/SATs Papers pdf format/NCT-Threshold-Tables/ks2-2012-level-thresholds.pdf This is a copy.

We get from primaries the raw score and the level. This is all handled by our data manager, but I don't know the precise details. My understanding is that it's provided as a data download from their data management system to ours, SIMs or similar.

We record the sublevel too - eg 4a, 4b, 4c. As this is important for later data analysis.

papers/SATs Papers pdf format/NCT-Threshold-Tables/ks2-2012-level-thresholds.pdf Try again with the link

Aargh... Google 2012 Ks2 reading SATS thresholds
And you'll get there.

I'm intrigued by our mention of Raiseonline. I use this as a tool, but just as something that churns out data, nothing else. So I don't know how it works.

My understanding is that raisonline is just anonymous data. So it might tell us that we have 50 children entering on a L3 from primary, 24 girls and 26 boys, 32 are on the SEN register, 38 are eligible for FSM, etc.

What is data used for?
The data from primaries determines the initial setting. But we - in common with any decent school - will do our own rigorous baseline assessments very early on, and adjust sets appropriately. We also move children between sets over the years as required.

However, the KS2 data does play a part again when it comes to setting a GCSE target, because that is what we are measured against (cf Raiseonline, FFT etc). So if a child enters on a 4c and has had a disastrous KS3, with very poor attendance and little progress, and ended yr9 on L4a; they would still be set a GCSE target of grade C and would be pushed/supported to attain this if at all possible.

If a child entered on a 3a (but really should have got a 4a), they may end yr9 on, say L6a. According to KS2 SATs, they "have" to get at least a grade D. But as they are on L6a already, we would set them a target of +2 levels, which would be a grade B. The only difference between them and a student who "actually" got a L4 from primary, is that if their predicted grade slipped to a grade C, our intervention strategies would not kick in quite so drastically, because for them a C would be 4 levels of progress already (which is "good" in Ofsted-speak.)

Hope that all helps.
What is your concern?

That WAS the official threshold document for 2012 - as you can see, it was very hastily scrabbled together right at the end of the year and there were many complaints, and rightly so - so many that they have decided to change it this year (another very late decision, incidentally).

Not surprised it doesn't exist in an official format - it was embarrassing.

For the English score, that is.