Please help me make sense of Yr7 targets and grades.

[VivaLeBeaver]

DD got an interim report in Jan with end of year targets and current attainment level.

Same last week.

I saved Jan's one to compare. Some target levels have gone down. Like for Art in Jan her end of year target was 4b and she was achieving 5c. Then last week her target was 4c and she was achieving 4c.

Geography target level has changed, it was 4a in Jan and she was getting 4b. Then last week her target was 5b and she was getting 5c. So should I be concerned she's not reached her target in Geography or should I be happy that she's surpassed the first target?

And history they also changed the target from 4a to 5b. She was achieving 4a both times so I don't think they upped her target as she was doing well.

Have found with ds that he often reaches or is attaining higher than his end of year goal by January/February so the teachers will raise his target levels by one or two sub levels in order to try and extend him.

Sometimes he has reached or exceeded on one or two occasions he has not. However, as long as he has progressed we and he are happy. If there was no improvement from the start of year level then we'd be concerned.

But I don't think they've done that,not for all subjects anyway.

Maths her target has stayed at 5something even though she was getting 6c in jan and 6a now.

The geography target went up loads even though she wasn't getting the first target.

She's made no progress in English, gone backwards in art, backwards in French. No progress in history.

But she has done really well in science and maths.

The government says your child should make 3 levels of progress from whatever they got at the end of ks2 to the end of ks4. It equates to very roughly just under 2 sub levels of progress a year. Alot of schools are now beginning to expect 4 levels of progress between ks2 and ks4 which would be about 2 1/2 sub levels of progress a year.

I.e. If a child got a 4a in English in ks2, then by the end of year 7 they should be a 5b or a high 5c, by the end of year 8 they should be a 6c or a high 5a etc. - That is if you are going via the government. (DH works as a data manager for a secondary school)

Not sure if that's helpful or not - the schools targets for her could be changing for all sorts of reasons, but at least if you know the governments targets you might be able to have some idea how she is really doing.

Also, a lot of schools put interim targets for subjects down when the child first joins the school, then adjust them once they have done the first set of exams / assessments - that way they have some idea what the child is actually capable of.

Hope that's useful in some way!

Thanks. I'll see how she gets on next year and if she makes better progress in the subjects she hasn't done so far.

But I think maybe she's going to be more of a scientist than into history/geography. Not the end of the world I guess and I'm happy she's doing well in maths and science.

I think it's harder for teachers to set accurate targets for subjects such as History, Geography and Art where there are usually no levels in this subject to transfer across from primary school. MFL levels are usually lower because most dcs don't learn a language at primary school.
The gap between level 5 and 6 in English (particularly writing) seems wider than the same gap in other subjects e.g. Science and Maths.
My dd is Year 8 and they only have 1 hour a week of lessons in this subject so there may not have been enough time to assess this in January! Levels can also vary depending on the topics or skills assessed.

I find this completely baffling. Ds got level 5s at the end of year 6 (unofficially 2 5bs and 5a) He was given targets of 5a for core subjects- and apparently they are targets for the end of Ks3! Which is very odd. He has, obviously, (because if he didn't he would be on bread and water for the summer!) beaten them, but I haven't been able to find out where those targets came from. Because he is doing well, I have decided to forget about them until the next report, when I hope the end of key stage targets will be revised upwards..