6 A written English do I need to worry?

[Kenlee]

I was very supportive of my DD when she told me that she is level 6A for English. I don't want to helicopter her.

Although privately I'm worried as she is in year 8 . Does that mean her English is still at primary level?

Do we need to take action to remedy her lack of knowledge. What is normal for a year 8 child?

6A at the end of year 6 would be an unbelievably high level.

As in, you could count in the hundreds I believe the number of children in the UK who achieved L6 at all (ie 6C) in reading/writing SATs last summer.

So no, 6A at the end of year 7/start of year 6 is not primary level. In addition even if you left primary assessed at (say) 5b which would be very good, there is an expectation of a drop at the start of year 7, so sounds as if she is doing fine. What does her teacher say? Has she made progress over the last year?

(I see now you have misunderstood the way levels work - no, the number does not/did not equate to the year - just as well as my yr 7 MFL students are mostly working at a L2!)

Personally, I have always found the levels (not sub-levels, but 4, 5 etc) broadly useful, and far more helpful than 'what your child can do', because the latter tells me nothing about what she'd be expected to be able to do at a given age unless I spend lots of time and effort in research.

Whereas 'level 4 is expected at the end of KS2, level 6 end KS3 - I need to be aware if she's below that, above is a bonus' is very simple.

My daughter did scrape the level 6 English paper at the end of year 6 and is very good at English. Now that she is in year 8, they do many assessments and she usually gets 6A/7C/7B. The teacher has made it very clear that she considers these to be very good marks. When my eldest was year 9, her and her friends all wanted level 7 in English at the end of the year as they were then predicted A/A* at GCSE.