Is this true about year 7?

[justanotherusername1234]

I was talking with another mum, her dc is in year 7 and she claims her dc has not learned anything new in year 7 and is pretty much doing the same kind of work as in primary school, is this true? Surely this can't be right?

Not true for DC in state schools.

Most schools will have the children in sets, if they weren't achieving expected or above at Primary they will go over the same things again to build a solid foundation for year 8.

Not true in our case.

Was she specifically talking about maths? I find it hard to believe that not learning anything new would be possible in any other subject. With maths I could see how it could happen, though of course it shouldn't if set/differentiated appropriately.

Tosh

Absolutely not true for DS. Year 8, however, has been a breeze in comparison

Oh god the, "I've already done this Miss, why do I have to do it again?" child.

No you didn't do it last year, last year we did the foundation of the subject, this time we are looking more in depth but we need to review last years work for 1 hour first"

When they are doing GCSEs they will be using some skills they learned at primary, and at A Level too.

Not true in my experience as a mum and a teacher in both independent and state schools.

Absolutely not. Unless as a pp said; they were extremely behind on entering Year 7?

Crap. They will suddenly be having specialist teachers so in history rather than say learning the story of history they will suddenly be learning source skills. They will be learning new information but they will need to build on existing knowledge so it may seem at a quick glance oh they are learning equations agains but they will be pushed further and they will be starting to learning skills needed for GCSE.

We have found this to be the case in a lot of subjects. My Dd moved from private to state and a lot of subjects aren't set yet so there's a lot of repetition. In other subjects though, they've covered an enormous amount of work.

No i didn't find this in dd's state school. They were set for Maths, Eng and French in year 7 and Science and Spanish in year 8

Not true.

yes for maths, but so many other subjects were new, eg French

Your friend's child may well not have learned anything new in Y7 on account of not listening or doing their work properly.

I'm sure, though, that they will have been being taught new things.

Friend's dc achieved 100 + on year 6 sats, but I don't think it was a high score (all less than 110 I think). She said that her dc is saying that they are not learning anything new in general, particularly maths and English? She seems to think her dc is top of the class and says dc achieved the maximum possible in the last report for all subjects.
I really do not believe that in year 7 you learn nothing at all, it's just odd.

Your friend is a right bloody show-off, no?

"Top of the class" eh?

I think you just need to smile and nod until she gets over herself.

100 is a bare pass, is it not?

MrsBertBibby funny thing is, she has always been very secretive about school results until now that she thinks her dc is top of the class. She even mentioned what score she got for all subjects in the last report and if I'm honest I think she completely misunderstood the report. They give a score for behaviour/attendance/effort and then they give a gcse target (according to sats results). She mention her dc got 2 different scores (the highest 2 scores according to her) in all subjects. In fact the 2 scores she mentioned are the highest you can achieve but only for behaviour/attendance/effort not GCSE and if that is what her dc GCSE target is then it's actually quite low.

Iamagreyhoundhearmeroar yes that's what I thought, how can her dc be top of the class and be achieving top marks then, if the school uses sats results to predict gcse level?

I hope it is true. I want my dd to ease into year 7 at her new school with all the huge changes that brings. Familiar academic ground will help with that.

I'm a teacher and our school (independent) goes through from 20 months to 18 so we liaise with the Year 5 and 6 teachers to ensure that topics aren't repeated in Year 7 however the skills and demands of the work are completely different anyway from Primary to Secondary.

I can't see how your friend's DC had not learned anything in English. Surely they have read new books, for starters? And her DC will be doing things like writing articles, diaries, letters, speeches, and stories throughout her education in English but the type of thing she wrote in Y6 will be very different to what she's expected to write for the same kind of task at iGCSE level.

I agree with the pp who said best to smile and nod at your slightly confused friend.

Not true. There seems to be quite a lot of recapping in y7 in primary work but everything else has been new.

My ds has enjoyed English in y7 as it's taught so differently to y6 which was drilling for SATS. In primary school he hated literacy so this has been a surprise.

Your friend's son might be doing well in his set but everybody in that set probably got similar CATS/SATS scores.

My DD1 is in yr7 at state grammar after 8 years at prep. ALL of the maths she's done in yr7 she did in yr4 or yr5, and she frequently has the same maths homework as DD2 who is currently in yr4. Many of her class at grammar had never done French before but those who came from prep schools had been learning French since they were 3 years old.

There are a few subjects she hasn't done before - resistant materials, food tech, textiles etc so these have been great fun and quite challenging at times. Also science is taught as biology, chemistry and physics, whereas at prep she did 'general science'. Music has had quite a bit of composing, which she hadn't done much of before. English, RE, history, geography etc have all covered different topics to those she did at prep.