Flight paths

[my2bundles]

Can someone explain how they work please? My child year 7 has predicted end of year grades mostly 4s. I know they increase over the next 5 years if they continue to work hard. Does anyone know the predicted gcse grades if a child starts on predicted end of year Grades of 4 in year 7 please?

No, no one knows. Sorry to be so dismissive but schools all set their own grading systems so no one will have any idea how your school system works.

And, as the new 9-1 GCSEs are so new, the school itself won't have any data from what a child on "4s" at the end of Year 7 got in their GCSEs as they probably used a different grading system when the children that have already taken GCSEs were in Year 7.

Best plan is to ask your school.

Agree with golf

Our school gives 'vaguely on track for this range of GCSEs grades at the end of y11' grades from the start of y7. (Sort of 1-3, 4-6, 7+ type thing). Which at least makes sense.

I have no idea what a 'predicted for end y7' GCSE-style grade would mean. I bet if they took the GCSEs at the end of y7 they wouldn't end up with 4s (except maybe maths) as they wouldn't have studied the syllabus!

If your child got below expected in SATs then they’ll be predicted below expected (grade 4) for GCSE. If they got around expected, then grade 4/5. Straight 120s in SATs would get them a prediction of a 9. Other scores fall in between.

And that’s about as scientific as you can hope for. Plus you can’t predict 5 years in the future so even take that vagueness with a pinch of salt.

Anything that mentions end of year targets or expected grades for end of Y7/8/9 can be binned as made up nonsense.

The bloody flightpath system is one of the reasons I didn't push my DD to do well in SATs! It is such a pain and they never lower the flightpath 'as that will lead to underachievement' for the school, not the pupil even though they've got it wrong.

If your child improves their performance at school they will move up the flightpath so don't worry too much about them being held back by it at all. But I've always assumed that the predicted flightpath is the expected grade at GCSE.

DD's school have 4+, 5+, 6+ and 7+ It's becoming an issue in subjects which have different elements to them - like Design and Technology - because she easily meets her current flightpath in some elements and is way off on others. So if your report is due at the time you are in one of the rotations that is not your best skill, you are stuffed. Just daft, really. It's killing her enthusiasm for some subjects as well now

It's nonsense OP. Numberwang.

I work in school data, I could explain how these numbers were probably calculated but it's boring as fuck and not that interesting. There's no official guidance on what KS2 scaled scores amount to at the end of GCSE so schools either make it up themselves using plausible sounding reasons or they pay a company e.g. FFT to do it for them.

It's all nonsense though and really means very little. Don't worry about it. As long as your kid is on track in the curriculum don't worry about the grades.

I agree that it's all guess work. DD2 has predicted flight path targets of straight 7s for GCSEs as she got greater depth in maths and English sats. Highly unlikely she'll get that at GCSE, much more likely it'll be a range from 6s to 8s as she's a person not a robot. As long as her attitude to learning grades are good I'm happy.

I think there’s a bit of confusion? I’d take the grade to mean that if she carries on at this rate, she’ll get grade 4’s at GCSE. Certainly not that she’s at that level now.

Thankyou for the replies I will take it all with a pinch of salt at the moment. Jojo it's predicted end of year 7 grades not gcse grades. He got top marks for SATS and is working in all the top sets in year 7

As long as he is doing his homework, contributing in class and the teachers are happy, crack on. And I say this with a child in year 9 and one in year 12.

Ds1 was average, SATs result flight path had him as a 4/5 in English and a 6 in maths, he got an 8 in English lang and a 9 in maths. 5 years is a long prediction time.

Ds's school use FFT. His minimum expected grades have always been high which has led to him feeling a failure through most of his secondary school life. They also didn't take into account that he would be diagnosed with autism this year and all the difficulties that brings, especially the significant impact on his education.

He will reach some of his grades I'm sure but others he will be way off. For example he is predicted 8 for history but scored 5 in his recent mocks. At the moment though his mental health is far more important than his grades.

It's nonsense OP. Numberwang.

This, absolutely. At our school (and most of the others locally), the target grade (based on English and Maths SATs) will be "aspirational", which means they take the number and bump it up one. They will also have the same target grade for all subjects - so if a student did really well in maths in year 6, they will be expected to get amazing grades in Art, PE, and all their other subjects. It is all totally ridiculous.