What info would you expect to have in a school report at secondary?

[Neolara]

Just got my dc's school report. She's in Year 8. A couple of teachers make reference to her meeting her target, but there is no indication what that target is. They say things like she is making good progress and say what she needs to do to improve. While this is all great, there is no indication of her current level of attainment. It seems pretty woolly. Staff have obviously spent a long time writing the report, but as a parent I don't feel it tells me anything much that is useful. Just wondering what others' experience is?

there is no indication of her current level of attainment

That's because it doesn't exist. Levels have been scrapped and not replaced by the government and schools are in chaos about how to report progress/attainment at KS3. Some are looking at GCSE target grade and saying 'good progress' if they reckon that target is achievable in however many year's time. Other schools are making up their own systems which are invariably bobbins. Basically if she's working hard and doing well in tests you just have to hope she's doing ok.

Our school gives, per subject, Attitude Level and Attainment level, no text at all, ever (until march y11).

We have had a presentation on how they are now measuring attainment, and they have been very upfront with us that it is a bit finger in the air until they see how the new GCSEs pan out.

DD1 used to also have target levels, but she left secondary a couple of years ago. not sure whether DD2 (now y7) will start having them or not.

We get an extensive report 3x a year, with grades for each subject for effort in class, homework, and an overall level currently and an indication where students should be at the end of the year. The levelling system is a school determined one, but it is very clear with a number of demarcations and a clear explanation of the expectations at each level. I'm been very impressed with it to be honest.

The school must have a scheme for assessing progress and a marking scheme for tests and written work. How well she has done in these could be reported to support assessment of progress. She should know how well she is doing in tests and in assignments though. Have you discussed these with her?

There are no levels, and nothing to measure attainment by, and no one has any idea how the new GCSE grades are going to work, so they cannot be used either as targets or predictions. There is absolutely nothing anyone can say about your daughter's attainment.

user1497480444 you know full well that isn't quite true and that you're over-simplifying for effect.

Your school will have a way even if they haven't shared it of measuring your child's progress against where they expect her to be at GCSE. They might have decided it isn't robust enough to share with parents, in which case good for them for being honest.

She is only in Year 8 and so you don't need to be worrying whether she's on a notional "level 4" or "level 5". But you do need to know if she's engaged, working hard, enjoying herself, taking care over her work, completing tasks and motivated. I'd suggest going in to meet with a couple of teachers.

of measuring your child's progress against where they expect her to be at GCSE.

no one has the foggiest

user1497480444 I'm a teacher. Bring me a student, let me open their English book, I'll tell you in 2 minutes how they're doing towards their GCSEs.

You really think teachers aren't capable of measuring student progress? I'm sorry you hate your / your child's school so much.

of course you can't tell how a child is doing towards a GCSE with grades that have never been used, with no known grade descriptors or grade boundaries ever having been put into use, and no real equivalencies yet demonstrated.

Well, you're the expert apparently.

My eldest has done GCSEs and come out the other side.
My youngest is in y7.

I'm not a teacher, but an interested parent.
However I can roughly tell what flight path my DD2 is on at the moment.
She is on for grades 2-5 (not say 4-7, or 6-9). If I can tell that, then I'm damned sure that at practically any school (userXX044's rubbish cheating school excepted(see other thread)) the teachers can tell that too. I expect actually DD's teachers could give a slightly narrower band.
Is that helpful? Well yes. She isn't a top grade, nor a clear expected to pass. I do need to know that as I know we need to continue assisting at home to try to ensure that by end y11 she has the best chance of 4+ grades.

We get their homework, behaviour, effort, organisational skills marked from 1-4, current grade, target grade for end of stage. A comment from subject teacher, form teacher and HOY. It looks like it take a mammoth effort to compile but it always contains lots of mistakes, it's hard to have any faith in it at all,

Just to get back to your original question, OP (!), did your school not give your DD targets in year 7? A lot seem to do that now, which is of course mad, but it's based on year 6 SATs, so projecting ahead to what your child should be capable of at GCSE. So with my son's secondary (he's also year 8), we were told that when he started what they'd predict a child on those SATs should be achieving at GCSE. Since then we've had termly reports with 'on-track' (or below, or above track, etc) for each subject, plus effort and homework grades for each too. It's far from exact, but at least it shows you if your child's slipping or vaguely still okay.

I agree though, as it seems a bit odd if they have never told you what her targets actually are. Even if it's a flawed science, it still gives you some idea.

Really the difficulty is that schools are trying to come up with some kind of way to accurately assess students against GCSEs which haven't yet been examined. Most schools are going with assessing against GCSE grades right from Y7 which is problematic as students on the lower end of the scale won't even be on a GCSE grade yet. Many schools might also just say you are on track to reach grade X at GCSE at the moment, but really that's even quite difficult to say for a Y8 for example.

For all students, schools can pull out a prediction from the FFT and scale that to the top 10% for example and use that as a target, which they could either then say students are on track toward, or map backwards year by year and say whether or not students are on track for that instead.

I think the issue for a lot of schools around giving a current level is that whilst they would have been perfectly happy to do this with NC levels or GCSE grades, no one really knows what the new GCSE boundaries will be. There is an issue if you tell a parent in Y9 that their child is on track for something, which they then don't achieve at the end of y11.....

FFT targets for the new GCSE are bobbins, especially in Y7 as they sat the new KS2 SATs.

In some schools teachers are being asked to say if a Y7 or 8 is 'on track' to get a specific grade at GCSE. This is stupid. I can't even say whether my Y11s who just sat their GCSE were on track for a 4 or for a 5. No one knows what those grades look like. Tracking back to Y7 or 8 is ridiculous. Progress isn't linear for a start, and grading Y7s against a GCSE grade makes no sense when they're not studying the GCSE curriculum.

Broad bands might be more accurate but less useful. If you're saying that a kid is on track to get a 4-6 at GCSE, there's a lot of slippage in there. A kid could do no work for a year or even two and still be on track.

I suppose you could have 'headed for a fail' 'headed for a pass' 'headed for A-level' but at the boundaries of those categories there's a lot of fuzziness. Will some of my Y8s pass GCSE? Maybe?

Very true Noblegiraffe. We certainly have been tearing our hair out at some of what FFT is saying, but I think that's what a lot of schools are doing sadly. Certainly what mine is doing, after researching what other schools in the area are doing. The whole thing is a bit of a shambles really, in my opinion.