Ofsted announce school report grades are bollocks and to be ignored

[noblegiraffe]

Confirming what I’ve been banging on about for ages, Ofsted have announced that school internal tracking data - the sort of ‘working at’ grades that appear on reports to parents - will be ignored in school inspections because it’s made-up nonsense.

“Too often a vast amount of teachers' time is absorbed into recording, collecting and analysing excessive progress and attainment data within schools. And that diverts their time away from what they came into the profession to do. which is be educators.

“And, in fact, with much of that internal progress and attainment data, they and we can’t be sure that it is valid and reliable information.”

www.tes.com/news/ofsted-inspections-wont-examine-internal-school-data

Maybe, just maybe, if Ofsted are no longer interested in seeing it, teachers won’t have to make it up any more?

I have no faith in Ofsted to spot such things. They uncovered nothing actually interesting in their visitation last year. In fact, there is nothing at all about marking or feedback in the report,iirc.

We also finish teaching the course in late November , because revision. Which also goes against all the recent writing on memory and cognition. Hey ho.

It sort of does work like that teen minus the meeting bit. And I hate it. I want to mark my entire class's entire mocks. Only then can I see what i taught OK, what they have not retained and what they still cannot do. Plus, I am a control freak.

Maybe if you’d been allowed to fill in the staff questionnaire, piggy?

Although our last Ofsted report made no mention of it, and I’m pretty sure teachers had plenty to say.

In maths we all mark our own papers, then enter every mark for every question into a spreadsheet (bloody pixl).

We then feedback immediately, and they get generated a sheet of their strengths and weaknesses. I picked up a bunch of stuff from marking that was really useful (e.g. one kid wrote in pencil and another highlighted all their answers, instantly obliterating them from the scanned image).

I welcome this from Ofsted. Like the other teachers on this thread, I know that regular data drops are all about da feelz, and not about any reliable information especially pre Y10. However, as an English teacher, I love that our mocks are marked out of house. 4 hours of exam writing is roughly 10-13 hours of marking time, and the school would have to give the whole dept 2 days off work (with all the issues of poor learning under supply teachers, costs etc) to get them back in a reasonable time frame. Piggy, your system sounds mad though - we have a 2 week turn around with our external marker, then the exams come back to us, with a qu by qu breakdown. We input the data, then return the exams to the students. It works for me.

Of course data is important. Data is what tells you how your child is actually doing. Its how you spot if something is going wrong. Its how you work out if the imput you are putting un is successful or not

Now if that data is based on nonsense (three weeks of my maths homework for example) then thats the fault of the school/teacher, that doesnt mean its inherently wrong tracking a childs progress.

Put the kid in front of a GCSE paper once a term, mark it as a GCSE paper with an actual grade. Yep spot on fine by me. I kniw if there's been an issue at home on that day or i can find out.

I care about if a child is putting effort in class. And what that actually means in terms of end results. Of course you can predict at end of primary how a kids going to do, unless they suddenly excel or suddenly start failing, theres an average range they are likely to achieve.

I'm not really interested in attendance. Neither of my two can help that. Its unsuprising if you have hospital appointments, stays and medical issues that your attainment suffers. Im sure i read that if you took out medical, the attendance issues have to be pretty severe before attainment is affected.

And I really dont want fluffy words on a report. I know from bitter experience they mean precious little and can easily mask lack of progress.

I think ofsted would be short sighted to disregard data totally. Interrogating the basis for that data should be part of their job

Put the kid in front of a GCSE paper once a term, mark it as a GCSE paper with an actual grade.

No. Apart from this being a horrible waste of time and printing budget (and we don’t have the GCSE papers to do this!), how would you set a GCSE paper for a KS3 student who hasn’t e.g. studied Romeo and Juliet?

that doesnt mean its inherently wrong tracking a childs progress.

This is actually impossible to do.

As a parent I've always ignored the effort or attitude to learning grade because it has borne no relationship to reality.

Examples include an effort grade of 1 (excellent) for dd in PE in y11 when she got a weekly detention for never bringing her kit.

In every secondary school report she got a 1 in maths when I knew she was coasting and never revised for a test in her life, and got a 9 on the back of 4 hrs revision but always got a 2/3 for English when she attended every intervention, spent hours outside of school doing practise papers and had a tutor all of which meant she managed a 5 in her GCSE last year.

This is actually impossible to do.

Dont talk nonsense. Its not impossible. Ive seen it done well at secondary, primary and nursery. Also when ive questioned it ive seen the evidence its based on.

(Although i prefer the old levels system, DC old primary actually kept it up for SN kids for whom the working below expected completely masked both progress and when it went wrong.)

Put the kid in front of a GCSE paper once a term, mark it as a GCSE paper with an actual grade.
Works well for Maths. Works for science if you give gcse questions or styled questions relevant to the topics being covered. Its good prep for the kids. No wont necessarily work so well in other subjects. Doesnt mean measuring progress shouldnt be done.

Works well for Maths

I’m a maths teacher. No it wouldn’t.

Dont talk nonsense. Its not impossible. Ive seen it done well at secondary, primary and nursery.

I bet you haven’t. Professor Becky Allen, formerly head of Education Datalab hasn’t seen it done well...

rebeccaallen.co.uk/2018/05/23/what-if-we-cannot-measure-pupil-progress/

Thanks @Heyha , makes sense

May I be smug? We have been given the Inset day after the Christmas holiday to mark our mocks and plan. Hurray, some joined up thinking at last!

You need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

She highlights the problems with testing. Teaching to the test for example. But she also aknowledges that you can get a fuller picture with a variety of measures.

So a drop of percentile may indicate a bad day and rectify on a subsequent test. Or it may be a cause for concern by identifying and investigating you probably can figure it out. But if you have no data at all how do you even identify a potential problem? If you see that drop continuing you know you have a problem

And yes ive seen it done. Ive seen ongoing monitoring of attainment, and ive also seen where that has been used to identify
The need for specific areas of additional intervention. This was backed up by ed psych testing (and my own observations from home).

Ive also seen it done badly and to mask bad teaching and monitoring. But tbh when you call in ed psych, slt and ot; its not hard to highlight bad practice. Id rather see bad practice highlighted than

The GCSE papers thing works fab at DCs school for maths. Both for my one who attained a GCSE grade in year 8 and the ine who besrly scored (but did!) . For the one with substantial SN it was essential for highlighting yes actually this could be the right school in the long run anc therefore justifying the substantial intervention needed to make it happen. Its been really valuable.

Also a maths teacher, although not currently practicing. And a particular interest in statistics. Teacher opens a mark book and shows me a collection of scores i have a vague idea what they are on about. Show me a book of math work and i have a really good idea. But i also know a test score can be a reasonable summary and highlight whether i need to be investigating further

Tell me you based you assessment of progress on my maths homework scores and that really is worthless

The GCSE papers thing works fab at DCs school for maths.

Not for measuring progress or whether the kids have grasped what was taught in the last term it won’t.

If you’re a maths teacher you should understand this. Spend a term teaching fractions, then the (single I assume, not the full 4.5 hours) GCSE paper has one question on fractions which the kid makes a stupid mistake on and it looks like they’ve learned nothing.

This definitely makes sense to me as teacher of a practical subject. Complete guess work! But what about intervention? How will we know who is underachieving and who to target (except boys and PP) without this. Can we, god forbid, trust our professional instincts!?!

If it’s all guesswork then how do we currently know who to target with any accuracy?

Anyway is it fair to target a kid for intervention if they have low attainment but a high target, yet ignore another child who has the same low attainment but a low target so is ‘on track’?

Working out? Id they've shown their working out and made a stupid mistake on the final score, they'll still get a fair amount of the marks for that question. A couple of stupid mistakes is not going to mask the entirety of their attainment.

Also accuracy is a necessary part of maths and showing your working and important teaching point . Both should be an important part of their learning as well as method and deep concept understanding.

The GCSE paper is used as an overall measure of progress. It shows a slow creep to GCSE level attainment. Your right Its not terribly useful in more specific area assessments. But that not a case for statistics being inherently bad. Its about using the right assessment for right purpose.

Thats easy to spot when you look a little closer at the match up between raw data and observations and results.

As a parent I want an indication that my child seems to be understanding what they are being taught and are trying their best and therefore will pass the exams if they are taught the right stuff and keep trying their best.

I was completely baffled by our year 7 end of term reports.

It said at the end of year 8 your child's target is a grade 4 for every subject. The grade 4 is what they would get if they were sitting a GCSE that day but the child may get a grade lower or higher than the prediction. It explained the targets were based on their SATS. so the fact that he is great at maths and rubbish at art isn't reflected in his targets - he has the same target for both. It also didn't explain if the target was good or bad.

It then told you if you child was working towards getting a grade 4 at the end of year 8, working at getting a grade 4 at the end of year 8 or working beyond getting a grade 4 at year 8. But it didn't really explain what that meant. I'd expect one term in to be working towards it because you cant have covered enough material. But perhaps that's wrong and you should be working at it because they've already factored is that you've covered 1/6th of the material. Who knows? Do they even know?

Its totally absurd. Every parent I spoke to had a totally different understanding of what they had been told. I literally didn't understand what I had been told. I can only base my understanding of his progress by looking at this homework and making my own judgement of it.

If parents really want this data are they actually understanding it cos I don't?

I'm a maths teacher too. GCSE papers work in year 11 as mocks. Beyond that they are useless. Instead we write topic tests /quizzes based on what students have actually been taught in the past few weeks.

This informs future planning and means as a teacher I know what students have learnt, and what topics need more time spent on them. As we go through the year, I incorporate topics we have studied since September to test long term retention too.

Crickey! I’m delighted that some of you think this is good news. I think it’s bloody awful. If they won’t look at internal data, it’s all on outcomes in the statutory tests (you are living in fantasy land if you honestly think they won’t look at any data outcomes!) In schools, we have a significant proportion of children that are inconsistent due to day to day life and so may pass a test on one day but not the next depending on what’s going on elsewhere. I have cohorts in school with particularly high SEN proportions or high social need so will do far less well than other cohorts even with the same teaching. Internal data allows us to show how well these children are doing through the years at our schools but that will not be taken into consideration - just all or nothing on the statutory test outcome because nothing else matters??!
Yikes 😮

Green it is possible for a kid to show working out and still get no marks if they’ve made a stupid mistake at the start.

And you know that what that kid really needs is a comprehensive test on fractions, not a paper a bunch of which they won’t yet be able to access. They won’t get the benefit of the testing effect if they’re not being tested on what they’ve been taught.

I don't see the point in giving my DD a maths test where she can access less than half of the paper before y11. (I don't really see the point in y11 either, but that is the curriculum so there's not much choice).

Chosennone

You can turn professional judgement into data. So if you have a series of "i can..." statements level them 80% of level 1 10% of level two. 6 months ago they could do none of level 2. Evidence attached. Its the okder why if doing assessment but remarkably valuable.

If you ever actually have to go to tribunal, having a teacher say a child needs intervention is not really that useful. being able to say on average the rest if the class made x amount of progress, expected progress at this age is.... this child made.... which show her progress relative to her peers is falling behind. If you can then using the above highlight the specific areas/reason why that child isnt achieving (so a kid hcan plan something but doesnt have the physical skills to complete the work for example). You are even more likely to get support.

One of the first things a parent has to do before they can get support is show inadequate progress compared to peers. If im trying to construct that data because the teacher doesn't have accurate records i know their in thevwrong school before ive even started