Attitude to Learning..

[curlew]

...if your child's report had 4 attitude to learning levels-1-outstanding,2-Positive,3-Satisfactory 4- Poor, what would you be happy with? Mostly 1s?' 2s?

My DDs' school does this, although they actually have changed it to 5 categories now, where 3 is satisfactory, 4 is unsatisfactory, and 5 is poor. My DDs typically have ones and twos but older DD always gets a 3 in maths despite exceeding her target...

I would take very little notice of them unless they were poor. Some teachers mark these things much more generously than others and some still largely correlate them with attainment (A1, B2 etc being the default), other teachers probably don't know my child well enough to judge and still others are too time-pressured with other stuff to give it enough consideration to be accurate.

Yes, 1's and 2's is fine. Mostly 3's and 4's is not as DS found out

I agree that it can be very subjective though.

DS got a D for PE last half-term and we nearly fell off our chairs as PE is the one subject we could be certain he would get an A for. They had been doing dance

Next question. If your child had got mostly 1s with a couple of 2s in year 7, and mostly 2s with a couple of 1s in year 8 would you be concerned?

Not overly. Y7's are typically keen to please and Y8's are trying to be too cool for school. But I would ask at Parent's Evening. And DH would tell the DC that they had to get better grades in the next assessment!

I don't think I'd be personally concerned, unless I had also witnessed a decline in attitude to school/homework myself. Teachers are likely to begin to mark more harshly in year 8 to head off a decline in behaviour that can happen then, so it may well be absolutely nothing, but I would act all concerned to my dc and tell them to pull their socks up!

and if it's different teachers in year 8 to year 7 all my earlier comments stand - it may well be nothing.

Tend to agree with other comments that Yr 7's tend to try harder and has they get older its not seen as cool .... My dd is in Year 7 and they have 5 categories - she has been assessed as mainly 1's and 2's with one 3 and the form tutor did raise this with us last week ...the 3 has it happens was in English which was really surprising because dd was stating how much she was enjoying English again ...but the form tutor explained that this grade was sometimes given when a child had allot more to give but was not fulfilling all their potential - which I again found odd because some of the comments made by the teacher in class - excellent vocabulary and assessments all mainly level 6's - I would address at PE if you have concerns...

lottysmum, I'm not concerned about PE - it was just that DS is great at PE, but hates dance!

No, if it changed at that level in year 8, I would probably think 1) my child isn't quite such an eager year 7 any more and 2) teachers give out 1s less readily to year 8s! And then I wouldn't worry.

My year 7's form tutor last year explained that level 1s are usually actually limited in terms of how many can be given out in one group - so a teacher has to decide on which children are in the top 10% or whatever of the 30 in the class, and only they can get 1s. Presumably in a difficult class then, no-one would get a 1? . So it might be norm rather than criterion referenced.

My year 8's interim report is due shortly, so we shall see whether I feel the same then!

Bigtillymint - I didn't mean PE ...I meant curlew should address at Parents Evening (PE)

Oh!

I would pretend to be more concerned than I would actually be. Sounds very normal, but wouldn't want it to drop any further.

I just wanted to say, we got dd2's y8 interim report and I think there are more 2s than there were last year - ours goes all the way down to 5, and you get a score for effort and behaviour separately now.

However I've come to the conclusion there is no rhyme or reason to it, and it depends on teacher and class context. We were imagining how, based on her scores, dd sits in maths putting in absolutely 100% effort in maths, whilst behaving less than perfectly - and in Product Design or whatever, behaving impeccably but not trying as hard as she might.

It's bollocks, at the difference between 1s and 2s level at least, I am convinced.

Now, can anyone help me with those pesky NC levels, as I have literally no idea whether it's good or bad for a year 8 to be targeted level 11A in every subject

The ATL scores are fairly randomly assigned in our school. They have a scale of 1-5 and both my dds always get 1,2 or 3, but it doesn't relate closely to their attitude at all. Some teachers give 3s to most of the class. My yr8 dd is super-keen, quite obsessively so, the sort who asks to retake a test in her spare time if she doesn't feel she's done justice to it, but it doesn't mean she gets all 1s.