School reports which give your kids GCSE grades or 'flightpaths' are bollocks

[noblegiraffe]

I've posted quite a lot about how reports which say 'your child is currently working at a 4+ in maths' or 'your child in Y7 is making good progress towards their GCSE target grade' are nonsense.

No one knows how your kid would perform in the new GCSEs because no one has had any results for them yet. This is especially nonsense for the subjects other than maths and English where students haven't even sat their mocks. Students from Y7 up have had GCSE target grades generated for them through a computer program that doesn't have any information about how anyone has actually performed on those GCSEs. These targets will be bobbins, and will be revised the instant any results roll in and so will change year on year as each new Y11 cohort sits the exams. If you've been told these targets by the school, the school is stupid to do so.

Teachers are forced to make up 'working at' numbers, and give a 3+ or a 4- to give an impression of accuracy.

If your kid is in top set Y7 then that's a good sign. If they're in bottom set that's a bad sign for a GCSE pass. But there's a long way to go and a lot can happen. That's as accurate as you're going to get.

There's an interesting twitter thread here where experienced headteachers are discussing exactly how nonsensical these reported grades are.

twitter.com/teacherhead/status/885923507858792457

Comments like 'GCSE grades extrapolated back to KS3 despite the fact we don't even know what they mean for year 11. Utter madness- completely meaningless'

And 'It's nonsense, but the shambles we find ourselves in nationally doesn't help.'

• just confirm that many teachers feel the same way about this illusion of science.

Didn't do SATS even.

Probably. Schools don't like kids with no data.

Noble just had my twins end of y8 report, complete with flight path. What even is the point of them? fecking Gove

Obviously noble it's even more stupid now there are no grades at KS2. for me when I have to do the new intake

There are ks2 sat grades aren't there? I've seen people on mumsnet talking about getting 98 or 112 etc for each subject.

Have a look at the flight path photo I posted, there are only a few flight paths, corresponding to level 6, or 5a, b, c etc. Some poor sod has to decide where 116 falls compared to 117 or 115. Will it be a flight to a grade 9? Who knows!

Noble had a proper look at your photo. Flight path on my boys report is "Beta" which I think was determined from their Y6 SATS results. Maybe I've given them a rollicking for no reason following their end of term report.

I'm going to go out on a limb and disagree with Noble on this, or at least I would rename the thread to ...

"School reports which give your kids GCSE grades or 'flightpaths' are at best a work in progress and at worst bollocks"

Our school (and the others in the same MAT) uses them, but they've been massively caveated. Parents' meetings have explained the work and rationale that has gone into them. They've been mapped to old and new levels using all available data, but the school fully acknowledges the current sparcity of the data-set, and will be refining the flightpaths each year as the picture becomes clearer.

I can understand why schools that don't use them might want to throw mud at those that do, because it makes them question their own approach. Of course eventually all schools will use them, but many will refine them behind the scenes first, or else wait a bit longer and buy them in from somewhere else.

Personally I'm glad our MAT is being open with parents, doing their best to take a lead on the levelling, but explaining why they can't be certain about it, and how it is likely to evolve over time.

From what I've heard, parents in other local schools that are just being told "below, at, above" or "bronze, silver, gold" or whatever are feeling somewhat patronised - like they know there's a revolution going on but they're not yet grown up enough to be part of the conversation.

@generallypreoccupied we don't use them. Not so we use expected, working towards. We use end of year exams alongside effort and achievement grades (with grades also in behaviour, homework and class work). They are on a 4-1 scale. Everyone understands it.
We track progress every half term (not reported to parents). No need for 'flight paths'. They just remind me of the predicted growth chart in my maternity notes!

I'm not throwing mud at them because it makes me question my school's approach - my school does something like this and I know it's bollocks because I'm one of the teachers making up the data that makes parents think they are being told something useful. (I've fed this back of course, but any amount of refinement won't polish a turd).

The attached photo is what a real flightpath would look like.

This thread is interesting because it details exactly the same problems with assessment and reporting in primary schools
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/primary/2980338-Disappointed-with-school-report-is-it-harder-now-to-get-exceeding?pg=1 read mrz's comments.

Basically, there are national assessments at KS2 and KS4. There are no national assessments Y7-Y10, and schools set their own. There is therefore no reliable way of telling what 'grade' a kid in Y8 is working at or where they fall on that diagram. Any data produced is subjective, will differ between schools, departments and even teachers. One teacher's 4+ (below expected progress) is another teacher's 5- (expected progress), or even a 6 (above expected progress). But the difference in how the parent will feel about that report is huge. I've seen it on MN all the time, parents taking this sort of thing very seriously, and I know how little thought goes into it.

We added a wonderful caveat to our recent year 10 reports. It was obviously worded very professionally but basically meant 'this is a load of made up bollocks and we actually have no clue what GCSEs will look like next year'.
I will leave predicting year 7s to the wonderful FFT calculator. Let's make them earn their money this year

Noble, as a mathematician you will be well aware that people fit straight lines to scattered data all the time, and that the accuracy of the fit is related to the correlation coefficient. The more data you have the better. At the moment there isn't enough, and that needs to be made clear to parents. Eventually there will be though. So I would re-draw your diagram like this (with the second graph being in a few years time when there is a lot more data) ....

mums I've just looked at the FFT targets for my Y7s. They appear to have given a target of a 9 to everyone who got over 110 and then some random others in my class. Given that according to the DfE about 5% of the population got over 110 in all their SATs and greater depth in writing, and that only 3% of kids in Y11 will get a 9, this seems to be setting us up for a fall.

I'm a parent of a just finished y13 and a just finishing y7.

I am personally predicting GCSE results for my DD2. I am predicting that they will fall in the range 3-6. At this point in time I think that is reasonably useful, and as accurate as possible.

I am basing my predictions on: my knowledge of DD1 and how her GCSEs went, what I have read here about changes to GCSEs, where DD2 is now, her general strengths and weaknesses.

It seems to me that schools can predict grades, but with quite large error bounds. Where it all goes wrong is when they claim to be predicting a '4' or a '6' rather than a general range and trying to do it every half term is just crazy. A bit like my DD1, who when asked 'how many people were at the show - around 150?' Will answer 'No, more than that, I think about 163' !

I have a DD16 just finished her GCSEs - I didn't bother looking at her predicted grades for some time now,

because we were told by the school that they were pretty much a meaningless, box ticking exercise

because she is bright, I know she will come up somewhere in the grade 7-9 region in pretty much everything,

because she also works hard and revises and knows where she lies academically amongst friends, she knows that is where she will end up too -

and the whole world would have to turn upside down for that not to be so.

Lots of parents have a fair idea of where their kids will end up - seems they have as good a guess as the teachers for the next few years.

Not read the full thread. But i hate the new system its so complicated. My ds was massivly over achieving last year and doing great. This year since they changed the grade system it looks as if hes dropped a grade or 2 and now being told he's under achieving. Hes took it so hard. Hes autistic and is his own worst enemy. Hes giving himself such a horrible time to the point hes had to miss days at school due to anxiety and stress over it all. Before the grade changes he was on target for a's and a*'s no where near the equivalent now.

I think being in the 7-9 range is a very different kettle of fish to being in the 3-6 range.

DD1 was predicted mainly Bs at the start of y10. As the predictions were adjusted, it help clarify what she could / could not go on to do afterwards. Should we be looking at A levels? Or BTECs? Would she pass English so be able to do a L3 course? Should she have done the level3 course she chose

I can see now my DD2 is going to struggle with English Language, and that is useful to know now in y7 (rather than being left to panic in y11 like we had to with DD1).

I do think schools should give some idea, because they do know whether a child is top, middle or lower. Just not pretend an accuracy where one doesn't exist.

the accuracy of the fit is related to the correlation coefficient. The more data you have the better

These two things are individually true, but one does not follow from the other. More data does not equal more correlation, it just makes your conclusions (which may be that there's no correlation) more reliable. Adding more data could actually lower the correlation coefficient.

The attached photo is a scatter graph from a grammar school of 11+ ranking versus GCSE ranking for a particular cohort of students. There's no correlation. Where would your success arrow go?

I'm struggling to articulate how your own graph doesn't make any sense, Are the dots meant to be individual assessment scores, like a flight path? For multiple students? That's not a scatter graph and correlation coefficients and lines of best fit wouldn't apply.

I'd like to use a system where at ks3 we talk more about meeting / moving toward expectations for their age & ability, which we do as a dpt but slt want 'hard' data (i.e. Numbers) whilst forgetting they are pretty meaningless....

11+ ranking and GCSE ranking at a grammar school probably doesn't make a load of sense since if you zoomed out to include all the kids who didn't pass/ take the 11+ you'd find the ones in your graph in the top right bit of the graph.

Our school has in the past shown CATs v GCSE results and there is a general correlation of better CATs leads to better GCSEs. However there are always outliers, and always those who work harder and outperform expectations and those who slack off for whatever reason and underperform.

As a parent, I'm getting pretty annoyed with all that TBH.
Yes I do getbthat the task has been VERY hard for the teachers to provide any assessment at this moment in time.

But it can't be doing any good to the children to not know where they stand. How can you tell them that they need to pull their socks up and get to work? How can you tell that you are actually asking them much more than they need to do??

Vlooby, you are probably right. It feels from this thread like KS3 seems to have got a bit lost. I don't see any reason why some of the 'beyond levels' stuff for primary couldn't be used for yrs 7-9.

Are Ofsted taking a similar line in secondary to the one in primary where they're slightly less interested in the data and more in seeing the progress in books.

Tom Sherrington is not a Headteacher anymore. He had a shock departure in January of this year.
Not that what he says isn't, in my opinion anyway, excellent.

Yes Teen, if you zoom out it's the top right hand corner, but if you zoom in, it's a cloud. And if you draw a line through it, you split that cloud into winners and losers. Creating an average and then demanding that everyone try to be above that average by working harder, and punishing those that don't make it is what Gove was slated for.

Things like FFT targets are averages. They only apply at a cohort level, they should not be applied at an individual level.

I read that Cauliflower. If he'd stayed at the grammar school he'd have been fine. And they wonder why we've got a shortage of headteachers.