If your DC got L6 maths in Y6, how did they find the transition to Y7? ....

[wotafaff]

DD loved maths at (state) primary, was in the extension group, with a specialist maths teacher, was constantly challenged and stretched, and came out with a very solid Level 6.

She's only been at secondary for 3 weeks, so it's very early days, but while she's being inspired in many of his subjects, the maths is getting her down. She's revisiting topics she did much lower down in primary, and can't quite see the point. The extension tasks aren't challenging her, and she's feeling uninspired. Her friend who went to a different local school is having similar issues.

Is this par for the course for "able" mathematicians in year 7? I'm guessing the Y6 maths teacher had the luxury of going beyond the curriculum, having got her peer group solidly to Level 6. In contrast the Y7 teacher presumably has to stick to the National Curriculum script, much of which DD will be already be very familiar with. To be fair, she is being given extension tasks, but they're in addition to the easier stuff, not instead of it, so the frustration is still there, and while they take a little more thought she's not finding them hugely challenging.

What should my expectations be?

Ds has started year 8 at a reasonably selective independent where they are set for maths. They seem to have adopted a policy for each topic of revisiting the stuff they have already done and then extending it so, although ds is not particularly challenged, he's not been completely bored either. Those who have gone to local comprehensives have not been bored and are learning new material, according to their parents.

Dd is at a grammar school and achieved Level 6
She hasn't complained at all and is quite happy to go over the topics that she had learned in year 6.

I think it is very usual, during the transition from primary to secondary school, to cover old ground in some subjects and to feel quite stretched in others. At any break point in any educational system there is a period of adjustment. Schools also need time to get to know their pupils. Probably best to sit out the first six weeks before addressing this issue.

Quite sensible Bobo. I am sure you are right.

Dd did complain a bit about how easy it was, but there were so many other new things to deal with that we let it as it was. After Easter she started getting new stuff, and the following school year it has been more interesting.

Same here with both children and yes, they found year 7 Math class extremely boring as more than 90% of what they did was revisiting what they had done in primary school.

I did speak with their teachers about it at the first parents' evenings and in both cases this prompted them starting to do extra work, but even that wasn't very challenging.

I did worry with DD whether that would mean setting her back, but she progressed better in year 8, then really distinguished herself in year 9 and then year 10. She took the national math test (can't remember what it is called) and got a Gold result last year. She is now doing her GCSEs and expected an A*.

DS started year 8, and already seems to do additional exercises, so feeling more reassured after seeing DD's progress.

As a mum to an extremely able yr10 DD I find all these threads about 'my yr 7 DC not being academically stretched in their first few weeks'' actually quite sad. There is so much more to starting secondary than pure academia. They are familiarizing themselves with a whole new environment, friendships and entering a new period in their lives. I think there is so much more for the children to achieve during the first half term than just a seamless transition between yr6 & 7. I think you really need to relax until at least half term. They all find their levels, and as long as the teaching within the school is not generally poor, they will survive.
I'm sure my DD would have agreed that her first term was not greatly challenging, but I can assure you that didn't last too long.

Tend to agree, DrivinMC. Though it's hard to say much because other people can only live their lives and maybe things really are very different for them compared to us.

Its also a tough transition for us parents too. We are so used to micro managing our DC at primary because we have only a few teachers who are involved in our kids education.

I had to learn to take a huge step back from my DDs secondary, and am still constantly told by my 14yo DD not to email/ring her tutor/teachers on different issues.
You and your DC will develop a new dynamic with their school.

I remember DS1 moaning about going over maths topics at the start of Yr 7 (and the start of other years if he changed teacher) and having to explain to him that his teacher couldn't assume that a pupil previously assessed at a particular level necessarily fully understood everything they'd previously covered. And that each teacher needed to get to know everyone's strengths and weaknesses in order to help them progress. He did struggle a bit to cope with these weeks as being stretched in maths was one of life's pleasures for him at that time.

However, there was another problem that I found more frustrating. His top set maths group were doing very well and after taking a test in Yr 8 he proudly announced his grade to me that night. Next day, he was gutted as the class were told there was an error with grading and they were all being put down a grade. He also couldn't understand how this could happen as he'd scored 100% in the test. I strongly suspected this was a bit of a fiddle as this Yr 8 class was reaching the levels expected for the top end of Yr 9. This would leave next year's Yr 9 teacher with a class apparently not making progress as they were already at the top of the levels expected. Children are expected to make a certain number of progress points each year or the teacher's competence is under scrutiny. I strongly suspect they hadn't made a mistake in the levels you could achieve on the test as I believe they are all banded so that you cannot score above the top band of that test. So if it was for level 6 and 7, say, then it wouldn't show children working at level 8 as that level of work wasn't being tested. So everyone going down a level seemed unlikely to me.

That was a while ago though, as he's now 21, perhaps someone else will know if that kind of thing still happens.

Key Stage 3: the wasted years?
www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/459830/Key_Stage_3_the_wasted_years.pdf

One of the remarkable points about this report (which really isn't news and hasn't been for at least a couple of decades*) is that they asked the children about their experience.

Giving them an easy time up to autumn half-term while they get used to it is one thing, but the problem can last much longer than that. It did for DD's Y7, albeit not in maths. That was sad because primary put a lot of effort into both teaching them stuff and making them more responsible ready for secondary, only for secondary to throw too much of that effort away.

They go to school and sit in classrooms for the majority of the day. Most of the friendship and other stuff happens around/outside the classroom, so there's no obvious need to make what happens inside the classroom so babying and patronising.

Some schools and some subjects will obviously be better than others...

Without knowing both the cohort and the child it's really hard to judge if someone is being ott about their child being bored/ unstretched. There's a big difference between a child who has put a healthy level of effort into learning the l6 stuff that's on the primary sat paper spending a term going over level 5 stuff with a bit of extension work. And a child that just gets maths and instinctively understands how to expand a basic concept to a more complex level, working beyond a l6 and who found the l6 sats test easy, suddenly being expected to spend a term rehashing l4 with the odd minor extension piece into l5 work.

And because I identify more with the concept of finding class work far too easy and therefore boring, unless someone says something that indicates that isn't the case, I tend to take them at face value.

I strongly suspected this was a bit of a fiddle

I do think this goes on in state schools. Both from my experience of two children in primary and through listening to parents using the local comp.

"I strongly suspected this was a bit of a fiddle"

Well that's a bet you can't lose.

A variant of this happened with DD's end-Y7 level. Levels are a bureacratic box-ticking game and they can become completely useless for the brightest children in maths. What really matters is what they are actually taught at what pace in their lessons. Plus of course what they think about the subject i.e. my now Y8 DD still loves maths and what she volunteers about the lessons is a much reliable metric than levels.

I agree. Dds report and teacher assessed level at the end of ks2, not to mention the fact school always shared what she was up to in the normal way, aren't reflected in her sat result for maths. Because it's impossible to get more than a 6 on the ks2 l6 paper. I imagine the same thing happens at secondary with dc who are beyond l7 but only assessed as l7 because that's all the work went up to. And so on for l8.

What DS found difficult (more than DD) is that his primary school was on a mission to get as many kids to get level 6 as possible (to get extra funding). They got the local secondary school to come once a week at 8am from after Christmas time, to teach additional maths. They did so many SATS mocks, they knew everything by heart. They inevitably got used to that rhythm and a number of them actually enjoyed the challenge.

So to go from that to being bored, going over the same things again at a very slow pace does demand a level of mental adjustment. DS was not just bored, but missed being challenged and the good feeling afterwards of having done well (even if he sometimes complained about it at the time).

Thankfully, he knew what to expect as DD had gone through the same (although not as challenged in primary), so it didn't come as a shock, but he went from really enjoy maths to really not, which was a bit of a pity.

I don't think the fault is with the secondary school but the primary school who are just a bit too keen to push some pupils to attain level 6.

running it would be really easy for a teacher to assign the wrong levels to a maths test. They would just need to read off the levels for the wrong paper. So if they accidentally looked at the grade boundaries for the 6-8 paper, the whole class would get a grade higher than if they looked at the grade boundaries for the 5-7 paper. All the grade boundaries are in the same document so it would be an easy mistake to make.

Secondary schools don't tend to monitor year on year progress as closely as at primary school, teachers are usually judged on the performance of their exam classes, not Y8s.

Dd didn't do a level six paper but she was put in top group from the secondary school assessments that they completed after SATs in primary. They were streamed from the first day according to these assessments.
For dd it has very much been she has been expected to hit the ground running but it's a big school and there are eight sets and so top set are fairly able.Being top set means that the lessons are very fast paced and there doesn't seem to be much recap from what I have seen from her books in year seven.

For me I think dd would be more comfortable in set two but apparently she holds her own and is considered middle of the top set.

@noblegiraffe: "Secondary schools don't tend to monitor year on year progress as closely as at primary school"

Which, to an extent, is fair enough.

What really irritated me in Y7 was that they made so much effort to pretend that they did have a finger firmly on the pulse. We had those termly tables of subjects, colour-coded (green, amber, red) sub-levels indicating whether on track for end-year targets, and ratings for the behavioral/attitude stuff.

Most of it was bollocks, vaguely in the right ball-park, but a long way from reliable. School-side must understand that, yet we (parents + child) were all expected to go to parents' evenings and treat it very seriously indeed.

No SATs here, but dd is still pretty bored in maths - now into yr 9. She came home with a certificate saying she was top of the year in maths, is above the levels where they standardise in the annual Welsh govt tests, and persistently gets a B for effort in the class (As in everything else bar RE) - but unlike other subjects it seems that the highest target they'll give for end KS3 is L7, and L7 is what they teach to, regardless.

In a sense, it doesn't matter, as providing she doesn't turn overly teenager/rebellious I imagine she'll get a good GCSE grade. But I do think it's a shame that a lot of able teens get put off maths so comprehensively at secondary level. A friend has a maths-y ds, and an almost identical experience at the other local secondary, so it's not just her school. Come to that, it was very similar when I was at secondary even back in O level days - I got an A with minimal attention or effort, and wherever possible scheduled musical instrument lessons over my maths classes to reduce the boredom factor.

At first, they have to roughly put everyone into sets (or teach in mixed ability groups) based on NC assessments. This will mean that your DD is in a set (if the school has put them into sets) with less able children who achieved L5 in NC assessments. After they do their own assessments, they will be able to put them into more accurate groups.