Is DD below average, average, above average?

[Okki]

How do we tell from reports. She's in YR10 has an excellent attitude to learning. But all we have is minimum target and aspirational target which are her achievements expected for end YR11 along with what she's currently working at. But how do we know if she's working at national expectations or needs help. She could be trying really hard at something, hence the excellent attitude to learning, but still be crap at it. Nobody ever wants to tell us when we've asked.

I thought schools use 'flight paths' now where they work back from a guesstimate for gcse based on year 7 / SATs performance? And this gives a target for the intermediate years?

Ds2 is now in year 11 so I have been through this already with Ds1.

Lots of schools will just say a 7+ as the grade boundaries shift every year and the 9s and 8s are based on the grade 7 result. A full explanation with some lovely maths involved is here ofqual.blog.gov.uk/2017/04/05/setting-grade-9-in-new-gcses/

Roughly, a 7 is an A in old money, so any child predicted As across the board is doing very well. A 4 is an old C but classed as a low pass C, a 5 is a high pass C, a 6 is a B. The 9 was brought in by Gove to show the best of the best, however Oxford consider an 8 and a 9 with equal merit as they are both A*s.

When I was at school you needed at least a C in Maths and English to be able to progress to whatever you wanted to do. Do most providers of post 16 education and training require a 4 or a 5 at GCSE now? I have a year 8 who really struggles at school, but I am not sure what he absolutely must manage to achieve in order to be allowed to do anything after his GCSEs.

Thank you everyone. This has helped hugely - it's what I thought but was struggling to put into words. DH is French and their system is so very different, so he is struggling to understand why she doesn't have an exact mark vs average and what her class ranking is.

Dd is year 9 and predicted 6s across all subjects except pe she’s in line for a 5. She’s on track - the app tells me with an arrow system. They then reset the targets at the start of year 10 and that will be her gcse predictions. To be honest I’ve no idea what’s normal or good for year 9 so the year 10 ones will be a much better indication. I’m hoping for 7s and above for her (not told her that) but I’ve no idea if that’s realistic. It feels like if she’s already a 6 at the end of year 9 then that should be achievable but it’s impossible to know.

I never understood the working at and aiming for marks. And if I asked a teacher they really couldn't explain it either - some said it was if they took the exam now, others said it was a grade that if the child continues to progress as they were (some of the working at grades were 8s, some were 6s - obviously you aren't going to get an 8 in physics one term in, but equally I knew she was not going to get a 6 in English). Teachers seem to have their own criteria. She did get her 8 in physics and 9s in English...
Conversely my son got two grades below his working at and working towards. I really feel the school let him down as if we understood he was doing so badly I would have got him extra help (he didn't revise that much either as I think he thought he had it in the bag).