End of year 9, predicted a 7b in english

[kilmuir]

Is this ok? New to all this, find it odd they predict 2 years ahead.
We have parent teacher interviews next week and daughter worried. Thanks

I struggle a bit to understand my yr 9s levels and predicted grades. It shouldn't be hard but I also have to work it out before parents' evening and remind myself how it fits together - this year they've switched from the Levels to giving them actual GCSE level grades plus predicted ones.

And my Yr 9 is extremely fickle on those levels, and has been since KS1. She will make 4 years' progress one year, no progress for 2 years, then a few levels up, then a drop down. She does this for all subjects. Her levels look like one of those cardiac arrest charts you get on hospital dramas.

My DC got level 5's at KS 2, but this was because she was crammed by booster classes and had a boring Yr 6 experience. Her secondary school experience placed her lower, but that has worked well for her, she believes the improvement she is making through her own efforts.

Personally I find the provision of grades/levels from my DS's school very useful. We are given the minimum expected grade, current grade and predicted grade at end of KS3 for each subject twice a year. Ds is in Y9 and his current grades range from 5C to A* with most around the 6A mark.

There are only 8 levels. I've taught secondary English for 11 years and only given 2 Level 8s, and not because I didn't teach any bright kids, because it's really, really hard to get.

The push to get higher and higher levels in Year 6 is starting to come out in the wash in Year 9. You can't insist on 3 Levels progress per Key Stage if there are 3 Key Stages (before GCSE grades kick in) but only 8 Levels. That's basic Maths!

Many of the 'Level 6's that come to me in Year 7 and the 'Level 7's that come to me in Year 8 are sadly the victims of inflated grades due to overmarking by schools and teachers under enormous pressure to show more and more progress. I have always refused to do this so my results are crap on paper!

I'm not saying your DD isn't a genuine 7b btw OP! If she is she's on track for top GCSE grades.

The OP said a predicted 7b in Y9 which is reasonable for a brightish DC.

DD2 is only in Y8 and got 7c in her last history test and yes I'd be suprised if she didn't get an A for history if she works hard.

I'm very skeptical of English L6s at the end of Y6. I doubt many DCs writting is mature enough.

Maths is more of a mixture, DD2 took and failed L6 maths, Im sure a couple of her class passed it both very clever and one a maths teachers DC.

Had they had more after school craming, they started too late, and DD had just scapped a pass, it would have been very unfair on her senior school.

Nocomet I'm of similar opinion re the Yr6 L6 English. DD2 is likely to be taking it this year, was a 5A early in year 5.
Always been a bit sceptical, but her English language is already streets ahead of yr12 DD1 who was level 5a end of year 9 and got a B at GCSE.

When DD2 was in yr3 and 4, I would have been hard pushed to spot the difference between an essay of hers or DD1s. Main giveaway would have been DD2 had not quite got paragraphs yet, her vocabulary and handwriting were actually better than DD1s.

Quite scary really.

If she is in Y7 then a target grade for end of Y9 has been churned out by a computer with no knowledge of your DD beyond what she got at KS2.

Anyway, levels are being scrapped (although schools may still use them), and any attempt to predict GCSE grades from this target are useless as GCSE grades are being replaced by numbers.

You might as well pick a number out of a hat as a way of predicting the future achievement of current Y7.

Tantrums - my DD has a 7b in English near the beginning of year 8. Wonder if you could clarify what that means compared to average and GCSE grade. Sorry but my Google link is broken ;)

OP your child probably understands all this better than you do- certainly DD2 is very aware and alert to her targets and what they mean to her

I'm not too sure about generous teacher assessments being a Y6 thing. I think secondaries are at least as bad at it. My Y6 DD got a level 6 in her practice English paper recently. She's a very bright child, reading young adult fiction and writes fantastically.

My Y9 DS on the other hand has writing and comprehension skills which are definitely well below DD's - and hardly improved from primary school. His teacher last term awarded him a level 6 which I think is highly questionable - I think she was just trying to tick him off as having reached his target grade. If my DD isn't a Level 6, then my DS most defintely isn't. So I fear that the Y9 grades may reflect what grade they came in at (and hence the target grade they were given) more than they relate to current level, or still less to GCSE grade they'll get in 2 years time.

My daughter got 7's in English and science and 8 in maths and got A & B in English, AA in science and A*in maths a year early. 7b is a very good target.

For science that should have read A star A star (double science).

Purpleroses - I find there is quite a difference between primary and secondary sats levels. My year 7 daughter went into year 7 with level 6 maths (solid 6b) level 6 reading (scrapped by a few marks) and 5b grammar. She is now working to a target of 5a in maths - the highest target in the year but along with about 15 others, 6c in English and I think 6b in science. I don't think you can compare the 2. I don't know why, being a parent and not a teacher, but particularly maths seems v different.

But what I'm saying Tallulah is the opposite - I can see from looking at my DCs written work that my Y6 is writing heaps better than my Y9 - yet he is also being given a L6. Maybe some primary schools inflate grades, or kids drop back over the summer, but in our case it's definitely the secondary school that is giving the higher grades than I would expect. ie a L6 would seem to be easier to obtain in Y9 (if it's the target grade and the teacher's under pressure to make sure they obtain it)

That's exactly why purpleroses. And if their Year 7 and Year 8 teacher did the same thing, it takes a brave Year 9 teacher to put a lower grade on the report and risk the wrath of the Head and the parents. It's crazy and sad, but true. I've seen it over and over again. I used to sit in meetings where Year 8 sets were agreed knowing that my top Year 7s were going into set 2 or 3 because another teacher had vastly inflated their Year 7 grades (14 Level 7s in a mixed ability Year 7 group, really? ) and there was nothing I could do about it. I hated it and I'm so glad I left.

Would the answer be to have more exams, marked by someone other than the class teacher, do you think IheartKing? Even if a school did it internally but swapping papers around between teachers for marking?

I picked the point up with my DS's teacher, who admitted that he'd obtained a level 5 in all three of the pieces of assessed work she'd marked, but still justified a level 6 in his report because she thought he ought to be capable of it if he tried harder! (and these are attainment grades, not targets I'm talking about). Nobody's going to give him a GCSE on the basis of what he ought to be capable of if he tries harder though are they?

Good departments do moderate like that a lot, and it is good practice. English is so subjective but the marking does have to be consistent.

That's terrible and so misleading! Is his target higher than a 5 by any chance?

I don't know what the answer is but as long as teachers are judged against pupil targets that they haven't helped set themselves, it won't stop. Performance related pay won't help.

Yes, his target is a Level 6 (He's a bright lad and did v well in the CAT tests hence a high target despite real problems with his writing ability). I took it up with head of English but she was just really definsive of his class teacher (who's very young and a bit rubbish imo) and claimed that there were "elements of L6 work" in one of the pieces of work

Do you not think with performance related pay schools would have to start moderating marking?

But she's not doing him any favours at all is she? I feel so sorry for kids caught up in this. Elements of L6 does not average out at an overall L6! She's put down the 6 because if she doesn't she'll be hauled over the coals to explain why he hasn't got it. And what about his teacher next year? When he does get his 6, if they put down a 6 it will look like he hasn't progressed from his '6' this year! And so it goes on...

Sorry, I'm feeling ranty on your behalf!

Maybe PRP will encourage better moderation - I hope so. But adding financial pressure on top of what's already happening is a recipe for disaster IMO. At my last school my HOD used to move kids in and out of her GCSE set 2. It took me a while to realise that what she was doing was getting rid of the ones who were the furthest away from meeting their targets, because they were bringing her results down. Somehow I doubt she'll be distributing classes fairly or ensuring targets are fair if that's her motivation - I can't imagine what she will be like if money comes into the equation!

I agree that it's quite hard to figure out what the levels mean, but I take your point tantrums! I've had a Google but still came on here to see if there were any posts on it.

My son's a bit of a maths whizz and his report says he's currently at a 7A in that subject (he's in Year 7) but his end of Year target is 7C .

Perhaps it would make things easier if schools stopped using he word "target". At my school we talk about "expected progress" instead, which means that we can tell students and parents that DC are meeting/exceeding/falling below expected progress. We explain that expected progress is 2 sub-levels per year or 2 full levels across a key stage.

I got levels 7 & 8 in all subjects at year 9 except English which I was told was level 6. I'd got level 6 in year 6!

I think that it very much depends on the teacher. We had some awful teachers and then had a semi-competent one for GCSE.

I ended up with 5 A* and 6 A grades.

That makes a lot of sense, EvilTwins, except that OFSTED are increasingly looking for 3 full levels of progress in a Key Stage! Madness.

It's not 3 full levels per key stage. Good progress is 3 levels between end of primary and end of secondary - ie a child with L4 at KS2 should get Cs at GCSE. However, many schools aim for more than that - 4 levels of progress across the years they are at secondary. 3 full levels per key stage would actually be impossible - it would mean that a child getting L4 at KS2 would be expected to get A* at GCSE, and anyone leaving primary with 5 or higher would automatically under-achieve.