Flight paths in secondary are nonsense and demotivating for pupils SAY OFSTED

[noblegiraffe]

Ofsted finally saying what I’ve been banging on about for years. Flight paths are bollocks and schools shouldn’t be producing them.

So if your school does, hopefully Ofsted not being keen might make them reconsider!

How are the teachers at your DC school accurately calculate students current attainment in years 7-9 in terms of GCSE grades?
I'm an experienced teacher and I cannot do this. Nor can any teacher I've ever worked with who understands assessment. That's why we all make it up.

Calculating

David Didau has written a blog which is basically this thread but more concise learningspy.co.uk/assessment/how-do-we-know-pupils-are-marking-progress-part-1-the-problem-with-flightpaths/

Of course students can exceed targets. Especially if they have been set artificially low

That’s the nicer end of giving kids crap targets. The nasty end is the kid who has been set artificially high targets and is then mentally battered for the next 5 years when they consistently fail to meet them.

You. Can’t Track. Progress. Accurately

I'm not talking in absolutes. I'm talking as far as accuracy goes concerning any human phenomenon. Tracking honestly would be a good start. No manipulating grades for purposes of personal professional or political gain. Yes, admittedly some people are more honest than others. But that's life.

The nasty end is the kid who has been set artificially high targets and is then mentally battered for the next 5 years when they consistently fail to meet them

Or the initial promise of a high grade boosts their confidence and they achieve more because they now believe it's possible. It's impossible to tell. Why not just be honest? Teach. Observe. Mark the test. Develop grade boundaries in a discussion which examines how other students, at that stage of their education have performed in similar tests over the years. Show the national graph with the scatter pattern on it. Discuss it. Job done.

That’s the nicer end of giving kids crap targets.

The nasty end of 'crap targets' is that they give up because they don't believe they can achieve. As I said just be honest.

Tracking honestly would be a good start.

Being honest would be saying we can’t do this. Being honest would be not developing grade boundaries for tests because that’s a steaming pile of wank.

Being honest would be doing the exact opposite of what you’re asking us to do.

Since you gave up teaching long ago/ never started cool (not clear whether you have QTS), perhaps you should now either a)re-enter the profession (there's a chronic shortage) and tell us all how to do it or b) write a book to contradict Didau, Wiliam, Christodoulou, Sherrington, McGill et al. Sure it will sell like hot cakes.

noble, so what are you left with? No assessments, no testing, no exams? How on earth will you match the learning material provided to a child's current level of understanding or stage in learning?

Honestly, if you can't teach then please don't! If you expect children to learn by osmosis then they don't need you to teach them, do they? They can just read books and explore more practically independently...

Piggy, wow! You're really riled now aren't you? Hit a nerve have I? Thanks for the advice, very interesting to hear your thoughts.

We can and do assess and teach. FFS.
We just can't assign an accurate GCSE grade to single pieces of work.

noble, so what are you left with? No assessments, no testing, no exams?

That’s the most bizarre leap I’ve seen in a long time.

No, not assigning nonsensical grade boundaries to tests doesn’t mean that we don’t have any tests. It just means we don’t have any grade boundaries or grades assigned. We still have the results of the test.

Slightly riled , yes, by someone who has clearly not heard of any of these people you have been consistently referred to in this thread and your refusal to concede that there is plentiful academic research to support noble, Ofsted and others' viewpoints. Maybe you are in teaching, in fact and are SLT. Only logical explanation.

cuckoo Pseudo GCSE grade or other type of grade. They are about as accurate as each other. With the pseudo GCSE grade you just extrapolate it up the standard progression trajectory to see what the grading reflects. What is your alternative form of grading? How would you establish the grade boundaries?

The exam boards, of course, routinely refuse to be drawn into discussions about grade boundaries, especially in the (many) recently revised specifications. They, too, just want us to get on with the job of teaching.

We still have the results of the test.

Conveniently reporting very little then.

With the pseudo GCSE grade you just extrapolate it up the standard progression trajectory to see what the grading reflects.

AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH

They, too, just want us to get on with the job of teaching.

Or like teachers do not want to communicate, in more concrete terms, to the wider public, the actual standard a particular qualification denotes.

As I mooted earlier, the term 'closed shop' comes to mind. I'm surprised you want parents involved in education at all. Well, to be fair, you probably don't want parents involved, except you need our help in either securing more funds or in providing political sway.

Develop grade boundaries in a discussion which examines how other students, at that stage of their education have performed in similar tests over the years. Show the national graph with the scatter pattern on it. Discuss it. Job done.

Do you know how long the current GCSEs have been around?
How much data do you think there is?
Considering that the specs for the current GCSEs were released shortly before the students who took them were in year 10, can you extrapolate what that means about the tests they did and the tests taken none?

Did you look at the graphs in the document I linked to earlier? I am attaching the Maths one, students who got A* at GCSE got a wide range of grades at A'level. That is so helpful.

It is a closed shop you are capable of joining if you wish to change things from within.

Maybe some parents just want a number. Not realising it's a totally meaningless number. I can tell you what a student is going to get in their GCSE round about the Christmas before they do them. Sometimes the correlate with the targets but often don't. I can't tell you in Year 7 what that child is going to get or what level they are at on the gcse trajectory.
What I can tell you is their CATS results which give me a good indication of spelling and reading ages and whether they are above or below the average score.

cool you’re accusing teachers who know what they’re talking about of doing a bad job, because you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Whatever your job is, you’re shit at it. I don’t even need to know what job it is, doesn’t matter that I don’t know what I’m talking about. You’re shit at it and that’s final. God, why are you so shit at your job? It’s depressing. Maybe you should try a different job, one you’ll be less shit at.

Said this for years. It restricts ambitious students, and piles pressure on others.

It's the lies, damned lies and statistics at its best.

Though if you'd have seen the AHTs face when I said this you'd have thought I'd grown horns and gone green.

Test the kids. Record scores, percentages and rank.

Plot on bell curve.

You can record that the child is in which centile and report that back to parents.

Trying to make raw scores into grades in any year but 11 is not much better than sticking a wet finger in the breeze. When they do full papers under GCSE conditions (mocks) then we get more accurate grade idea.

Before then....it's educated guesswork at best.

Even CATs scores aren't very reliable, if the three (now 4) different tests are averaged out to provide flightpaths/ targets/ whatever. My DS would be a case in point with 135 for the number one , about 110 for the verbal one and 85 for the space and shape one!

It is quite common for CATs to be harvested and not reported to parents, as it goes...

We stopped using them at my school because apparently we 'didn't like' the targets they produced!