Year 7 report

[Chocdrop01]

Hi just got my ds report yesterday and not really sure how he is doing. The school have used the new gcse 1 to 9 system. Does anyone know what level he should be at in year 7. Thanks

Yeh thanks am going to phone the school Monday just for my own peace of mind. Thanks again everyone for the advice and help

Chocdrop1

I think the system of every school doing their own thing is massively confusing - when DD started they were still doing the old levels. I found on a website for one of the Bucks grammars where they gave the average level for each subject attained by their Year 7 and 8 students. So I could use that to get a good idea of how DD was doing in each subject - if she was at or higher than the grammar school average then clearly she was doing well in that subject. Now you can't do anything like that.

DD is in Year 9 and at the last PE the teachers told us what sort of grade they thought she was looking at. And I asked in each case "Is that at the top of her range or is there any potential to go higher". So we now have a realistic idea of how she might do working at her current effort level but she also knows what she might achieve if she put in a bit more welly.

It's all very confusing now. Schools use different methods to set targets and different ways of grading KS3.

I've just finished my PGCE (science) and my last placement school had letters for KS3 and they didn't have targets.

(Oh, and I spent yesterday 'tweaking' Y10 grades for reports because the targets are for end of Y11 and their average is pulled down by the tests they sat in Y9 and the whole thing is now fairly meaningless but looks better for SLT )

My new school I'm not even sure yet, I've been told they mark on where there are for GCSEs now, but also use a bell curve, I'm really not sure how that works?

Anyway OP, if your DC had good SATs a target of 4 won't be for their actual GCSEs, so it's either the end of KS3 target, in which case it's fine, or where they should be now, which makes it very high, that's currently considered a GCSE pass.

Or it could be an arbitrary number unrelated to GCSEs, in which case there might be cause for concern.

Good look getting to the bottom of it.

Thanks everyone its definitely a phone call to school on Monday.

hi, my dd1 goes to a grammar school; she's in year 9 right now, and her targets range from 5-6. basically if your son has a target of a 4 in year 7 he's expected to reach that target by the end of the year. in year 8 his target should be a 5, and so on until year 11, so the levels increase by 1 (unless he exceeds expectations)and by year 11 he should be aiming for/getting 7s and 8s, maybe 9s.

@noblegiraffe Bear in mind that most 9-1 GCSEs have never been sat before this year, so a school getting good results in Y11 will be working with students who never had this reporting system.

True but they used the same system with the old A - U grades. My point was really that I know of 3 different schools with entirely different report systems within 3 miles of each other.

It is literally just made up. Staff report in numbers but as of the moment have no idea what a 2 or a 4 actually looks like and the exam boards won't say. Schools are expected to produce flight paths for where the students should be spring backwards but this is just a stab in the dark and general guess work unfortunately.

And after a few years at the school you will understand how completely crap targets are, and how little your dc will follow them. Mine have massively over achieved on some and underachieved on others, occasionally they have even met them, they are best ignored.

Thanks everyone x