Question for teachers

[var123]

Are there any teachers out there who could answer a quick question for me? I got Ds1's report at the start of holidays. He has a year end target of 7A is a particular subject and the teacher has awarded him a 7C.

I think the 7C is based on an exam DS1 did a few weeks ago. There were 3 questions in the exam paper. DS1 got a 7C for the first one, a 6C for the second one and a 5C for the third.

To me, the teacher - and NQT - is cherry picking the best result to show better progress than Ds1 is really making. The background is that DS1 says he finds the lessons very boring. I think he zones out. He says that all the other students find this teacher's lessons especially uninteresting too, and that they didn't even cover some of the topics in class that they were supposed to revise for in exams.

Is it valid to credit the pupil with the best mark, rather than an average? I don't think there has been any classwork marked by the teacher, only by the other children, so this exam is the only thing the teacher can be using to make the report.

sorry the should say - a NQT - not "and".

We are told not to base levels on one exam, but to look at general ability in class too. Maybe she felt the two lower levelled questions weren't indicative of his overall level?

Sometimes the questions are structured as to only be able to achieve a certain level eg in a certain topic to get level 5 they have to know x (& question 1 tests that)
Question 2 might test the knowledge of y which they need to understand for a level 6 & question 3 nay require an I depth knowledge of z if you see what I mean.

Maybe. I don't think he's ever looked at Ds1's work though so I don't know how the teacher would know how DS1 is doing (nothing has ever been handed in for marking and Ds1 is a very quiet member of the class).

Ds1 got a 6A last year, so he is capable of doing better than 6C or 5C, but he just can't relate to the this teacher's lessons.

Oh dear god sublevelling individual questions on an exam paper is not what levels were designed for.

Except for SATs exams, there is no official way of assigning levels to children. There is no official way of assigning sublevels to children. Therefore there is nothing to appeal to to say what this teacher has done is wrong. I personally make up sublevels for reports based on how I feel the wind is blowing.

If you want to query the children not being taught the topics for the exam then that's fine. But trying to dig down into how an individual teacher assigned a specific sublevel for a mid-term report will be an exercise in futility. It's subjective.

But 5, 6 and 7 are not sublevels. Isn't there a world of a difference between a 5 and a 7?

Please forgive my questions. The report is confusing overall. It gives a very mixed picture. So, I am trying to go through it subject by subject to understand what's going on, starting with the ones that he'll do a GCSE in that are flagged in red.

So your DC is predicted a 7A and got a 7C in the recent exam and you think this is wrong as you 'think' the teacher has not marked any work. I would say the exam was structured as someone mentioned before - to reach a level 7 in the final answer a 5 and 6 had to be achieved
First.

5c, 6c, 7c are sublevels. Even if it was just a 5,6 and 7, the amount of work produced for each question is not going to be enough to give a valid level to, comparable to a SATs level.

The teacher could certainly justify giving your DS a 7C by saying that he has shown he is capable of producing level 7 work, but it is a 7c rather than 'secure' because he is not producing it consistently.

It sounds like you are not happy with this teacher. But if you want to complain, focus on concrete things like not marking books and not teaching the required topics.

Q1 DS got a 7C
Q2 Ds got a 6C
Q3 DS got a 5C (partly because he ran out of time, partly because he was guessing - it was the topic that the teacher had not taught).

So, its not that Ds got maximum marks for each question, unless they were offered in reverse order.

\I did email the teacher at the time, before the results were even out, saying that DS was complaining of struggling to revise for the exam, and I got a very defensive reply back. Essentially the reply said well, I did MY part...

I am trying not to get too hung up on this. DS is only in year 8. Yet, there are several warning red marks on the report and I don't want to look back when it matters (about two or three years from now) and realise that the school was warning me that all was not well but I did nothing.

It is presumably based on class work too.

Levels are not great for formative feedback. Sub levels aren't helpful at all. What is it you want to know? What his strengths and weaknesses are? What he particularly needs to work on to be successful at GCSE? That's what you need to ask the teacher I think.

If there are several red marks on the report then there would appear to be an issue. Is he graded on effort? Using 'the lessons are boring' as an excuse for not working should be unacceptable.

Have you had a parents' evening or have you got one coming up? Do you know why DS is getting reds? Perhaps it would be worth phoning the head of year and asking for him to be put on a two week report card so you can get a better picture of what is going on?

He gets straight "outstandings" for effort. I think he stays under the radar. He's top set for everything that is divided into sets and I think he has high targets. I mean he's not the only one who is at the top with demanding targets, just that they are the highest given to year 8s by the school.

I was one of those who was told that parent's night appointments were unnecessary two months ago as there were no concerns about DS.

For those teachers who were willing to see me, I got the impression that they didn't know who DS is.

The report gives a mixed picture - he has some very good levels of attainment but there are some warnings too. In certain subjects, he appears to have made no progress all year, according to the report.

Would it be appropriate to ask the form teacher to help me decipher the report? Should i be looking at the effort and the high levels of attainment or worrying about the failure to meet some targets and the apparent lack of progress? Maybe she can advise whether to contact the individual teachers for the red marks or the heads of dept of the HOY?

This is the problem with using sublevels to indicate progress and fine-tuned end of year targets. The system looks scientific, but it's really all just made up. The amount of time that is spent deciding a current level for each student could well be a few seconds, and then you get parents fretting over something meaningless.
You could speak to the HOY who would probably have a better overview of the reports than a form tutor. Or you could wait until end of year exams have been sat and see what results they produce as they are more likely to give an accurate idea of progress than a mid-year level.

There are no end of year exams. Only mid-year exams. I'm not really worrying about sublevels. Its whole levels that are concerning me, coupled with no progress.

I agree that the school very probably only took a couple of seconds to decide DS's levels. He scored very highly on the CAT tests at the start of Y7, and that's when they were decided with no attempt to revise subsequently for neither out-performance nor under-performance.

The levels maybe are a rubbish indicator. But if they are, then where is the report that tells me how Ds is really doing?

As to the "outstanding" for effort, I don't think DS is putting in much effort if the way he describes what he does is anything to go by. As I said its a very confusing picture, and i find I don't really know how DS is doing, or if there really is a problem brewing.

So when you say he hasn't made any progress all year, do you mean from his mid year exams last year?
When are end of year targets expected to be met if the exams are mid year?

I think if no progress has been made since the last set of exams, it would be worth phoning the individual teachers to ask why they think this is in their subject.

If he scored highly in his CATS, did he also score highly in his SATs? Or is this a picture of underachievement over a longer period of time?

I was referring to English when i said no progress. The report gave his exam result and his expected attainment level for July 2015. Both are identical to his reported attainment level in July 2014, whereas his July 2015 target looks a long way from where DS1 actually is.

Other subjects show a little progress or a lot of progress, sometimes exceeding the target.

The subject I first posted about shows a small amount of progress, but only if the best answer is selected. Otherwise it shows a small fall back or a major regression.

At the end of last term, DS1 went into a meltdown (tears etc) one weekend because he was so bored. He craved stimulation. "Could him to a museum, please??" All the while, he's not meeting his targets for some subjects at school. I just don't get it.

then where is the report that tells me how Ds is really doing?

Good luck with that. We've now had three(!) of these unhelpful reports with traffic-light colours for Y7 DD. Too much of hers are clearly made up tosh based on poor assessments that in many cases were done months ago. I think whether they've ever noticed DD in class (she is quiet) is a credible factor in some of this.

Some of the subject teachers made a good effort to get it right (which correlates well with my impressions from their brief comments in exercise books that do make it home sometimes and have also been marked every so often), but that's less than half of them.

I was hoping it might get better in Y8, but perhaps not.

he did well in sats, cats and in the iq tests when he was independently assessed. I dont doubt that he has the memory, maturity, self-didcipline and all round ability to do well. However somehow the lessons don't seem to be engaging him. He wants to do well and has no interest in rebelling so I just dont understand why he's not achieving across all subjects.