When Are Predicted Grades Given - GCSE

[FiddleOnTheRoof]

General question here...

When did your school give your DC their predicted gcse grades. Spoke to a parent today whose child was given predicted grades at the end of each year’s summer report eg yr7 and yr8. Is this standard?

Does it vary depending on whether you attend a private or state school?

Can’t see how useful giving them that early would actually be. Year 9 seems about right, but what do I know!

What year did your DC receive theirs?

How would you be reporting progress to parents?

The mistake is thinking that progress can be quantified.

My kids’ primary school do something interesting (IMO!) on their end of year reports, they have three boxes for each subject, one for below expectations, one for meets expectations and one for above expectations and they put a tick in the appropriate box BUT the tick can be anywhere in the box. A kid who is amazing at maths could have the tick to the far right of the above expectations box, a kid who is struggling a bit in reading could have a tick to the left of the meets expectations box. Or it could be a bit to the left of centre.

It’s the not nailing it to a number that I like. The teacher isn’t pondering the difference between 8- and 7+.

I don’t know. I’d like box and whisker diagrams of the end of year test results across the whole year group but that might be hard to explain to parents. Maybe that data could be transferred to the ‘below expected’ for the lower quartile, the middle 50% would be ‘expected’ and the upper quartile ‘above expected’. (This would be for KS3 where every pupil takes it so that data distribution would be roughly normal). A tick in the middle of the ‘expected’ box would be around the median for the year group and the tick could be shifted as appropriate (NOT measured with a ruler though!).

No you’re not getting any sort of national comparison, but then neither are you with schools making up ‘working at’ GCSE grades because they’re bobbins.

I'm not sure how much that would really help noble (I'm the usual Teen poster, with name change due to eldest's birthday). Surely you'll still get parents saying 'but last year the tick was in the middle of the box, this year it is a bit to the left side, why is she not making progress?'

As a parent of a lower achiever, I was sad when primary levels went, because being told you are 'below expected' doesn't give an idea whether that is 3 months or 3 years below.

There clearly is no easy answer because:

• teachers have different levels of experience
• children aren't predictable
• parents want different info / involvement
• some idiotic parents seem to assume a prediction is a virtual promise
• GCSE results are graded on a curve (or whatever it's called)

I shall quietly go on being happy with the GCSE grade range given my my DD's school whilst simultaneously knowing I don't expect it to be accurate. (is this an example of cognitive dissonance? )

But that’s fine, Teen because the tick is based on actual attainment within the year group so relates to something meaningful rather than a made up grade. If the tick slid to the left of the middle box then in my school with a year group of 240, that would be a significant enough drop in attainment to be worthy of note. And surely we want to communicate significant drops in attainment? I said they shouldn’t be measureable with a ruler so not that accurate.

Some schools provide rank order within the year which is similar but probably a bit too fine tuned.

I understand the whole issue of ‘below expected’ not being fine tuned enough, but to the left of the bottom quartile would be pretty clear that there were serious issues. Parents evenings could be used to convey more detail.

We used to have tick boxes in handwritten report days. Took me years to realise some people were deliberately ticking to the left or right of the box! Meant nothing when I ticked ! Just sloppy presentation!

Hi I note that some have mentioned SATs (which will also mean Cat/Incas scores as not all schools use the same system) are used to assist with the prediction. Can anyone tell me how exactly they are used/do they assist? What score will predicts what? Are these really of any assistance?