End of year reminder: Flightpaths are bollocks, schools giving ‘working at’ 9-1 GCSE grades to KS3 kids are bullshitting

[noblegiraffe]

Basically that.

If your kid comes home with a report with a wanky flightpath on it, take it with a hefty pinch of salt. There’s no science or data behind it.

If your KS3 kid comes home with a report that says they are currently working at a GCSE grade 4 in Science (or worse a 4+, implying technical accuracy), then know that it is made up, no one knows what a grade 4 in science (or any subject really) looks like, and applying GCSE grades to kids who aren’t studying GCSE courses is just nonsense.

[noblegiraffe]

Rather than putting a grade to it, perhaps we could band the year group into higher, intermediate, foundation. Higher kids we expect to pass their GCSE with a really good grade. Intermediate should pass with a middling grade. Foundation will struggle to pass and need to put a lot of work in - the possibility of a pass is always there though. All borderline students should be marked Foundation, because if they put in extra work, it’s not going to harm them and it saves cliff-edge predictions.

Predicting single grades is too inaccurate, and you get the danger that if you predict a 7 in Y7 as a stab in the dark, then predict a 6 in Y8 as more info comes in, the kid is berated for ‘failing’ even though the problem was with the prediction, not the work.

[TeenTimesTwo]

Rafals It's fine, I don't need or expect accurate.
And if my DD is borderline, that's good to know too.

But even to be told: Struggling (Grade 1-4), Borderline (Grade3-6), Good (Grade 5-9) is better (for me) than vague words with no context. I find it hard to believe an experienced teacher can't make a stab at that.

[TeenTimesTwo]

x-post with noble . Yes I could go with noble's idea (as it seems similar to mine).

For core subjects as a p[aren't I want to know do I need to do solid intervention at home (eg work in the summer holidays, pay for a tutor). For 'options' subjects I need to know whether subjects are likely for success or not if selected. Even knowing Foundation/Intermediate/Highers better than nothing. (And that is better terminology than my suggestion).

[IrmaFayLear]

A raw exam mark is surely better than grades.

Dd got 94% in the end of year 10 Maths exam. She got a predicted Level 7, as the teachers said that those achieving 9s and 8s will be getting in the high 90s.

I think I understand the bell curve marking, but in an extreme case you could potentially be getting a Level 1 with 80%...

[TeenTimesTwo]

So Irma. If your DC needs say an average of 6s for their 6th form, and 7s in maths and science to be allowed to do science A levels, and their end y10 exams were
87%, 75%, 70%, 65%, 65%, 65%, 60%, 51%, …
Would you be think 'oh good, well on track to stay at school' or 'OK, school 6th form definitely looking a long shot'?

[Hellohah]

DS is year 8 in a school that has struggled historically with GCSE grades. I think last year they had 3 x grade 9's in total. That is out of 160 pupils. I don't know if that is normal - but to me, it seems pretty low. 3 grade 9's out of a possible 480.
26% achieving Grade 5 or above in English and Maths.
I know from his reports/parents evenings that he in the top 3 achievers in all his subjects for his year group apart from Art and IT. But that's just at his school (which is pretty low achieving). So where is he in relation to every other child in every other school? We don't know because teachers don't have this information and it would be ridiculous to expect them to have it. Therefore it's unfair for them to predict a grade.
I would prefer to know his strengths/weakness in relation to that subject, whether he enjoys it, if he can improve, and what he could do to improve. All I want is for him to be happy that he has tried his best and done as well as he can, whether that means his best is a 3, a 5, an 8 or whatever.

[IrmaFayLear]

I agree, Hellohah. Dd is at a similar school. Predictions cannot be made based on the pupil's performance in one particular school.

Sorry, TeenTimesTwo, I'm sure it's me, but I don't really understand what you are saying!

[TeenTimesTwo]

Irma You seemed to be arguing in favour of being given raw exam marks.

I was trying (but failing obviously ) to show that raw exam marks tell you nothing unless a teacher interprets them for you.

We all used to understand NC levels. NC level 6 by end y9 -> Passing your GCSE. Now they have gone parents need something tangible. Flightpaths giving Foundation / Intermediate / Higher are fine by me. Vague enough for teachers not to feel they are over-committing, but useful enough for parents.

My DD recently got 40% in a science test. I had no idea what to think (OK? Hopeless?), until the teacher explained it to me.

[IrmaFayLear]

Yes, unless the whole country does the same exam and everyone's mark is public, you are a bit clueless.

But I don't really understand how someone can be said to be a, say, Level 4 with, say, 45% if the grades will fluctuate according to how well people do? This year or next Level 4 might be 60%. Or is it just Level 9 that will be given to the top 1% or something?

[multivac]

This is an interesting read

Our Y8 boys came home with a numbered grades for both effort and 'progress' (1 - 4 in each case, meaning 'above expected', 'expected', 'below expected', 'causing concern'). Nothing for attainment. It's a system that will change next year, because none of the parents understand it, and there's no consensus about how 'progress' should be measured. I'm not sure how it can/should be improved upon, though.

[Bimkom]

Well our school did the flight path thing.

But from the chart it was pretty clear what they were doing. They were assuming that, with application, each student would go up a GCSE grade a year, and worked down (top grade was 8/9). So the top students in Year 10 were given 7s, and the top students in Year 9 were given 6s, and the top students in Year 8 were given 5s and the top students in Year 7 were given 4s (although I gather they gave a couple of rare 5s - not my DD!). The rest of the Year 7 grades were spread between 1 (or even 1 minus) and 4, so the range the teachers had to work with was -1, 1, 1+, 2-, 2, 2+, 3-, 3, 3+, 4-, 4. 4+.
So what I got out of this was that if one's DC got a 4 or 4+, they were at the top of the year - and therefore (given that the school is a comprehensive but historically the top sets do very well) likely, assumed they continued working well, to end up with an 8/9 etc. I certainly didn't take from this that it was impossible for students to jump two or more grades in a year, or fail to make progress, just that given the current position in the cohort, and how the school generally performs, that is the sort of GCSE grade they expected.
Dunno, didn't seem unfair to me, or bad statistics. We also get some grade predictions based on some sorts of CATs tests from an external agency, and those I have found for my DS (now finishing Year 10) and now my DD as worse than useless. (My DS is very good at maths and science - lower sets in English, these predictions all the way through have consistently shown him as getting an 8+ in English (and pigs might fly) and a 7 in science (would be very disappointing given the grades he has got over the years). It also consistently gives him poor grades in Art (where he is doing very well).
I have told my DD to ignore these "external agency" predictions, but it did seem to me that the 1-4+ grades were meaningful, even if it were to turn out ultimately that the "flight path" was not accurate.

[MaisyPops]

TeenTimesTwo
I think I could reasonably say based on this year and their dispositions, your child would be:

• potential 7-9 material
  
• 5/6 middle attainer, but with scope to gain more
  
• 4/5 borderline student
  
• someone who would struggle to achieve a 4
  

I wouldn't be happy to narrow down on a specific grade. I do think we could reasonably judge where a child might fit. That said, it's probably easier doing that in a school that gets lots of higher grades than one where everyonr is clustered in thr 4/5 mark.

[Bimkom]

OH btw, I also think it can vary by subject. My DDs modern hebrew tutor just got my Year 7 DD to take the 2017 MH listening and comprehension exams. (I have a tutor for her because my DD is in an accelerated class at school, which is half made up of native speakers, and half made up of linguistically able non-native speakers who have been doing the language all the way through primary school, like my DD has, and it seemed to me, as it did with my DS where i did the same thing, that either one needed a tutor to provide support in that environment, or allow them to kick their heels and be bored in the class below). When it comes to languages, and at least some parts of the syllabus, it seems to me it can be possible to genuinely mark an advanced KS3 student at GCSE level.

[TeenTimesTwo]

Great Maisy we're all happy.

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

it’s the assumption that each student goes up a grade a year, that turns it into bad stats. I’m not sure what method they use to divide the rest of the grades up between pupils, but if you’re splitting numbers up with + and -, then you’re basically just making it up.

I think that’s kind of the system I had in my head, noble. Is there a reason why some of the more objective led assessment and tracking systems being looked at in primary couldn’t be used in ks3?

[noblegiraffe]

just that given the current position in the cohort, and how the school generally performs, that is the sort of GCSE grade they expected.

No one knows how any school will perform in the new GCSEs, especially at grade 9!
Labelling the top kid in Y7 a 4+ is fair enough, but it absolutely doesn’t mean that that kid is currently working at a GCSE grade 4, or that the teachers have assessed her work against GCSE standards at all, merely that they have placed her on a bell curve and called her position on the bell curve 4+.

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

I do wonder whether creating meaningless data points and entering them onto spreadsheets sums up the workload issue.

[noblegiraffe]

Is there a reason why some of the more objective led assessment and tracking systems being looked at in primary couldn’t be used in ks3?

Objective-led assessment and tracking systems are total balls so I hope they don’t transfer this to KS3!

[noblegiraffe]

By objective-led I assume you mean tick boxy APP stuff? Like:
Can multiply and divide fractions - tick

Sounds plausible but in reality is time-wasting meaningless bobbins

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

Yes and no. It is a bit tick boxy, but not in a ‘you need this many ticks for a level 5/there aren’t quite enough ticks for a level 6 way.’.

It’s more of a has met/hasn’t met/working beyond assessment. And you only assess against the objectives you have taught so far, not the entire curriculum. Which, I think, deals better with the issues in that link you posted than APP would have done.

Obviously you can’t account for someone in SLT suddenly deciding you need every objective rather than a few key ones or deciding that teacher judgement isn’t good enough and every decision needs to be evidenced 3 times, or that you need numbers.

[noblegiraffe]

The problem with the objective stuff is that I could legitimately set it up so that a kid who is good at maths would face test questions which mean they would fail ‘can multiply and divide fractions’ and so that a kid who is not great at maths could tick ‘can multiply and divide fractions’, and the kid who is good at maths would still be better at multiplying and dividing fractions than the one who ticked the box.

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

There is that issue. But that might be because ‘mulitply and divide fractions’ is too broad. But, if you as a teacher know you are differentiating questions to challenge the higher attaining or support the lower attaining, then don’t you sort of have an answer about where on the scale of hasn’t met expectations, has met expectations, is working beyond expectations that pupil is?

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

I’m not suggesting it’s a perfect system. It just suddenly struck me as odd that given ks3 is a separate key stage, then the system many schools seem to reach for is something based on GCSE number grades.

[Bimkom]

Well I do pretty much know how they got the 4+ or the 1- or whatever. They had end of year exams, and the grade is based on that. In a couple of subjects they specifically allocated 90% is a 4+, but those mostly weren't ones in which you do a GCSE. The others told them at the time of giving them the absolute grade, what their number was. So that 73% for Science was a 4, while 60% for English was a 3. DD also know that hers was the second top mark in Science in (her) second set (and I think that she was only one mark behind the top). She doesn't know how the first set did.
I totally agree that it doesn't mean that she is working at a GCSE level 4 in Science (although my Year 10 DS has been amazed by how much GCSE science she has in fact been taught - they seem to have blurred the curriculum so that, a lot of the science she has learnt directly leads to GCSE science - the linearity is something even DS and I can see.) I don't know what the foundation type papers cover, but it wouldn' t surprise me if a lot of what she had to learn was on it.

But is it true that "No one knows how any school will perform in the new GCSEs,"? leaving aside the grade 9 (which the school has been careful not to specify as being on track for). Given that the grade boundaries are supposed to be pegged to the grade boundaries for the previous GCSE, then it is not unreasonable to suppose that a school might well perform pretty much as it had previously, especially if that was their experience with the English and Maths last year (as I believe it was) - ie pretty much as many 8s as they would have expected A* previously in both English and Maths etc. (If not slightly more).

[noblegiraffe]

If multiply and divide fractions is too broad, then we go to multiply fractions, then we go to multiply proper fractions only, then multiply fractions where simplification isn’t needed and as a straight calculation not part of a worded question, without a calculator. Then where are you? A billion cells on a spreadsheet and an overworked teacher.

And even then you can only tell whether that kid could multiply that set of fractions on that test on that day. Did they fail because they couldn’t multiply fractions? Or because they messed up their times tables? Or because it was the last question on a long test and they ran out of time? No idea. And if they could multiply that set of fractions on that test on that day, could they still do it the next day? Or even by the time the spreadsheet was filled in? Ebbinghaus suggests there’s a good chance not!

don’t you sort of have an answer about where on the scale of hasn’t met expectations, has met expectations, is working beyond expectations that pupil is?

Whose expectations? There aren’t any defined expectations for a particular kid in a particular year group at KS3.

The system that schools are reaching for is GCSE grades because those are the only thing we have that look like levels, and levels need to be replaced. Ok, so they aren’t defined standards either, but at least we’re expecting some data.