Expected levels of progress in KS3?

[prairiegirl81]

I'm just wondering if anyone knows how many levels/sub-levels a child is 'supposed' to make in a given year at KS3? I'm a primary teacher and we are always told 2 per year, 3 if possible. But have just been looking at my niece's predictions with my sister and it seems to imply much less progress is required. Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks

I too am wondering about this. DD1 has just started at secondary school and her grade predictions are all over the place. For example maths she has currently been assessed as a level 5b and her yr7 target is 6a - this seems crazy (particularly as her teacher assessed level at end y 6 was a 4a although she did scraps a level 5 for her maths SAT).

Other targets seem to be 5c and 4a....

Sublevels are made up shite, as are end of year targets. There's no science to it. I wouldn't pay them too much attention, tbh.

A teacher friend of mine was talking about this today. According to her, the Govt says two levels of progress, but for a school to be judged outstanding by Ofsted they need to be showing better than expected improvements so realistically most schools will be aiming for three levels for the majority of students.

The school also told us that pupils usually drop a level from their SATs results in the baseline assessments that they do in the first weeks of Autumn term (due to several factors; the long summer break, no longer being coached to pass an exam etc) and that they work to this baseline assessment. So, although they are expecting three levels of progress from the SATs results, in reality it will be four levels.

Ofsted expected progress (3-4 levels) is between KS2 and KS4. Levels are designed to measure progress between key stages, it is nonsense to then try to subdivide that per year (as it is subjective to try to subdivide levels). Progress is not linear, nor should it be expected to be.

I do think you are all confusing sub levels with levels. the expectation is two sub levels per year.

Therefore a target of 6a from 5b is not crazy.

MadameDefarge: Yep, sorry, I should have clarified in my original post, I was referring to 2/3 sub-levels per year being 'expected'.

NobleGiraffe: We don't pay much attention at all to such things. I'm just interested to know what secondary pupils are being asked to do, as it doesn't seem possible for children to continue at this rate for another 5 years, especially if their KS2 results were high. This doesn't apply to us, but there are children who are given L6 at KS2, surely this would be putting them off the scale by Y11 if progress continued at 3 sub-levels per year?

I teach at a selective and this is an issue yes. Fortunately, most of ours do keep up that pace and perform at an exceptionally high level. Our 'value added' is quite good. But it's hard going with the ones who don't want to do any work.

and I apologise for not being able to count! it was late! yes, level plus sub level in one year is way too high.

Prairie, if they achieved level 6 in KS2 (a level a year), then the school would have low expectations if they didn't then expect them to achieve the same rate of progress at secondary school. A child who got a level 6 in maths at KS2 could be reasonably expected to get an A* in Y10 and then do another maths GCSE in Y11.