Fischer Family Trust scores

[ruralmyth]

I've just found my two DS's FFT scores from Year 7. I remember being slightly concerned at the time. Both are now post GCSEs/ASs and the scores were completely wrong.
It doesn't matter a jot to them or us but I'd like to understand the value of them. Any teachers out there that could explain?

They provide an estimate of what a pupil may/could possibliy achieved based on prior attainment e.g, KS2 SAT results, teacher assessment, age and gender. Essentially if everything stayed the same as that snapshot on that SAT week this is what a child could achieve.
However some pupils work really hard, are late developers and targets are exceeded, some are very heavily coached through KS2 for English and Maths taught to the test and with the introduction and focus on other subjects do worse than expected or others life gets in the way and they do well just to get some qualifications. Others progress along that nice diagonal line and get their grades. They are notoriously inaccurate for arts/PE as they can't test natural ability.
I had a girl in my tutor group several years ago who was a late developer. Came to us with level 4s, started off in set 3s, by year 10 was in set 1s and left with the best results in the year with a string of A*s. FFT predictions were Cs and Bs.
They are supposed to be a guide, however some schools use them as targets and give them as a minimum target for the pupils to reach, which is not what they were designed for.

Parents shouldn't have access to their child's individual FFT score. They are an average prediction and should work out on average across a large group of students (typically a year group). They are not expected to be accurate on an individual student basis, and shouldn't be used as a target for a single student.

To add to what pp have said, they are 80% right for 80% of students.
To put it another way, they are completely wrong for 20% of students, and only 80% accurate for the rest... But they are what teachers have to try to work with.

Thanks. Are they produced at the beginning of Y7? I didn't know anything about them until Y9 when the teachers were talking about GSCE predictions.
DS1 said he thought the results were based on postcode, parents' occupation & early (presumably KS2 SATs) tests.

They are usually generated at some point in Y7 to predict a level for the end of Y9, and are based on KS2 results and look at what the average student with those KS2 results with the same profile as your child (so, free school meals, gender, ethnicity, post code etc, I think about 20 variables are used) does at ks3 and GCSE. These are updated every so often to take into account how the most recent cohort to go through exams did. So if historically boys didn't do as well, but then did really well, targets for boys would be increased. I remember once getting a new set of FFT targets for my group after they had sat their GCSE exam, which was helpful.

They are used by schools for individuals but were never designed for that. They are designed to apply to a group of students for purposes of, for example, illustrating to Governors if the whole of year 11 did well this year - or not.

I don't think post code and parents' occupation should have any bearing on targets.

They shouldn't hibiscus - which is why schools shouldn't use FFT score to determine gcse targets. Unfortunately they do......

My dyslexic son has never forgiven me for his school giving him an English target based on our background but taking no account of his background!

Still, he has learned a great life lesson - many companies use flawed statistics and you have to learn to live with them!

Teachers pay is also now determined by students acheiving these targets as well!

Fun and games!

I don't think parental occupation is widespread, certainly no school I've worked at holds that information, it would all be in SIMS which all the staff have access to (school database) and all have used Fischer Family Trust. There are different groups of data though, so unless you've specifically given your parental occupations to the school, I'm not sure how they find out, certainly I've never seen pupils be asked in 13 years of teaching. There is nothing on their website about parental occupation being used it simply states prior attainment, gender, age and postcode.

Everyone uses them as targets. Although are on their way out now. I heard they are decreased for people who aren't English as first language speakers. (You know!)

Postcode very revealing though. And presumptive

Most. My sons grammar never called them FFTS though.

I'm educated to a different level than most of my neighbours I think. It seems odd that my neighbours' average level of education will have more bearing on my children's targets than my own!

It's how the school's targets are worked out. How the kids' targets are worked out varies from school to school. Some of my top set maths kids have an FFT target of a C. I certainly won't be telling them that, and will only accept an A*/A. I'll be looking forward to the value added that they'll give me though!

i tell them to get them to challenge it

I think this y11's predictions are all over the place anyway because it was the year that boycotted the ks2 sats.