What are your thought about this year 7 child’s school report ? Is it awful ?

[Lardlizard]

This is the report of a year £ child who did very well at primary
Got greater depth on all sats this it was possible, has had a bit of a bumpy ride starting secondary due to bullying
Which I’m told by the child and the school has been sorted
Though of course I’m keeping my sensors up
The child seems to have settled in ok now and bullying seems to have stopped
I’ve said, right you’ve had your first year to settle in, but going back in September you need to pull your socks up and work harder

Mumski Not quite right.

The 'minimum expected grades' are 7s and 8s so presumably they don't think he is keeping up with those high aspirations.

What the report doesn't show is any 'current working at' or 'current predictions / flightpaths'. (Even though these aren't particularly accurate at y7 anyway).

So the OP doesn't know whether the DS is one grade behind or 4 grades.

Thanks so much for all the advice
Trying to relay it all to dh esp regarding getting this child to do GCSE books
She clearly had no idea thats what these books he has ordered are aimed at

Hi I'm a head of maths in a secondary school - this report is not uncommon for students who had excellent results in primary.
In secondary the challenge we as teachers face is teaching many new concepts which can be far removed from what they were learning in primary. It will take students quite a period of time to consolidate many new concepts.
Year 7 is quite a change in routine for students and they lack experience in how to prepare properly for exams and how to organise themselves and their workload.
Depending on the policy assessment of the school the calculation of grades may be based on different percentage weightings for exams, coursework and classwork - am sure if you email each of the subject teachers they will explain how they calculate the grade for the report.
I would not be overly concerned but perhaps moving forward it would be prudent to look at the students exercise book and find out the dates of exams and tests and support the student in how to better prepare for assessments.
The line of development in secondary is not linear - students are not more intelligent on a Friday at the end of the week compared to a Monday at the beginning of the week. Also teachers have to prepare on average 200 + reports which does not afford them a huge amount of personalised feedback so why not go and meet the teachers of subjects you are concerned about.
Also boys in general tend to be behind the girls in years 7,8 and 9 (well so the research suggests)
In summary don't panic it's a while yet before they start preparation for GCSE's

One further point. He appears to be doing less well in both the languages.
This may not matter to you of course, but if the school may make it compulsory for him to do a language for GCSE that might be an area you wish to pay more attention to next year.
Note also that attitude of schools may change towards languages, so even if it isn't compulsory now, it doesn't mean it won't be for your DS.

I am guessing that this is your first child at secondary, so I hope the overall advice you've taken on board from everyone is here is calm down, it's ok! Your son is obviously engaged at school, he will get better at homework and revision and the school will help him do that, there's no big rush for you to get him doing more work, or buying study guides. Wait until the new term, have a chat with teachers and ask if there's anything he could specifically work on - you setting him work when you don't know this isn't particularly helpful (you don't even know which books are most useful!)

In the mean time, give him a pat on the back, recognise what is actually going well!

(And don't forget he might not even do Geography for GCSE )

Totally agree but dh had this child working on them books last night
It makes sense to me if your going to spend time doing something. It should be on something related to what your doing
I’ve told him to read this thread and I’ll make sure he does read it properly tonight

I think it’s great advice to help prepare this child better for assessments but I don’t know how to do that

How to prepare for assessments:

1. Your child is to tell you whenever he has a test coming up
2. As well as asking him about the content he needs to learn, ask him (or look in his exercise books) the answering skills he has been taught. e.g. For geography it might be 'Compare the benefits and disadvantages of palm oil'. So as well as listing them, he will also need to explain why and come down on one side of the argument. Just knowing the pros and cons won't be enough. Another e.g. For drama my DD has to be able to write about a performance she has seen and its affect on the audience. There is a list of drama-techniques she is meant to consider (set, costumes etc), so I make sure she can list them. Maths you revise by doing practice questions, school may have a mymaths subscription, or you can get CGP KS3 maths workbooks.
3. Get into habit of revising for every test, even if only for an hour.
4. Try to see the tests after they have been marked as it will help inform revision for the future.

Please, let him enjoy his summer holiday! He doesn't need to be working on anything until September. Making him study now sems like a punishment and he hasn't done anything wrong!

Please don’t get him to work all summer. You may be doing stuff that he doesn’t thane to do yet, therefore concentrating on the wrong areas.
Can I ask is ‘this child’ your child? Or a grandchild? Etc. (Sorry to be nosey but it would make a difference).

Is there literally no explanation of the 'language' of the school reports anywhere? In their planner / Year 7 handbook / KS3 handbook / something on the website / a letter home that your DC forgot to give you - ?

Teentimestwo that’s reallyvreslly helpful thank you
This is what we needed it selling out to us exactly what to do
Would it be a good idea to ask the school if we could look at the assemenemts to see what questions have been asked etc
I’m in total agreement that what dh is getting our child to do is wrong and possibly could actually make thjngs worse

Thanks so much to everyone for taking the time to help

And yes this is our child not grandchild I’m not that old yet
And no there’s no further info on the report that is the entire information

Thinking about his low grades for MFL homework.
I wonder whether they have been learning vocab / learning verb declensions and then being tested and scoring poorly on tests?
That would tie in with poor revision techniques / time spent.

With MFL the verbs and vocab are very important. If you can't use avoir correctly or don't know the words for amusing/difficult/boring then it is hard to progress.

To me this still all leads to doing nothing over the summer, but start off y8 with you paying more attention to homework and tests.

YABVVU. He has exemplary grades for attitude to Learning, behaviour, classwork. These are the only things within his control. He is clearly dou f his absolute best and you should be applauding that, not telling him he needs to pull his socks up. Poor kid

Also there is nothing more off-putting for a child than a parent takinf ownership of his/her learning. Back off or you run the very real risk of turning him odd education for many years.

I agree with back off for the summer then crank it up a bit for year 8
With us being aware of when tests happen and looking at home work etc

What is mfl ?
Avoir ? I’ll have to google that one

Must admit you have made me see this child is behaving well and putting in good effort at school
I can see that more clearly now
Just hope dh can too

Seems a bit 'strict' that basically anything below 70% is automatically 'below expected' and anything below 60% is 'insufficient.'

I'd focus on the bits on the right rather than the below expected etc

mfl = modern foreign language
avoir = French verb 'to have'. That and etre (to be) are French basics.

Basic French & Spanish guides/dictionaries might help e.g.

French and Spanish

DD1 had them which were helpful throughout secondary for her.

Thanks teen times two
Your help has been invaluable
Do you have a fab charity ?
I wanted to send them a donation to say thanks for all your help and time

Fav not fab

Must admit you have made me see this child is behaving well and putting in good effort at school
I can see that more clearly now

Unless either his behaviour and effort has improved remarkably since, or it is actually some other student's report, isn't this what his tutor / subject teachers told you at parents evening? Or does the 'lack of communication' extend to not having those?

lard It's no trouble. I spend far too long on here, I'm sure on balance I gain more than I give. It was from these boards that I learned my DD1 might qualify for extra time in her GCSEs which probably got her a grade up in at least half of them.

Mine got much worse then yours (translation between grading between schools makes it hard to suss out) so don't worry as much as you are.

Teen wow I’d not heard jay some kids can do that, I think I might start looking around here more than s and b !
Well I’m doing a donation to sands again soon so I’ll be giving them a bit more this time

I think it’s a big translation from a v v good primary where the atompshere is caring And nurchering to a huge school where you can easily get lost
And the atompshere is totally totally different

And as for parents evening which we did go to, the info was just so wishy washy

Other kids got referred to as different names
As if they didn’t even know their names
This wasn’t our child’s though this was a friends in the same year