Yr 7 end of year report

[BrassicaBabe]

I couldn't feel any less informed I think. I've even googled to see what government guidelines are for KS3 reports. Couldn't find anything. Maybe that says just as much as if I found reams.

The report contained:
Attendance %
List of individual subject test %
Attitude to learning 1-5 per subject.

Attendance I'm obvs familiar with.
Attitude is nice to know, a bit interesting.

But those test %... so it's 70%.. but what if they were given an a-level test paper, or just asked to colour in their names?! What if the rest of the class got 99%, or 5%. So these numbers are meaningless.

Then there is ZERO other info. How have they done over the year? Have they improved? Are they where the school would expect or like to see them?!

What are your kids end of year reports like? AIBU to expect a bit more info?!

I was underwhelmed too. No end of year report, just the same as we got for the first 2 terms:

List of the subjects with target grades for y7 (GCSE grades so was a mixture of 2s and 3s, not sure what they've been based on and whether they all have the same targets) alongside each term the grade she's actually achieved - can see various ones have gone up or down over the year but no further explanation)

And for each subject a grade for both attitude and organisation, ie good/outstanding etc.

No comments, no test results. I was expecting something more comprehensive at the end of the year so will be interesting to see what other schools do.

DD3 gets attendance, number of good conduct points (with a comparison of the year average), mastery level for each subject, effort and engagement rating, and independent learning grade.

We get an explanation of what each mastery level means, and statistics for what percentage of students in their year got each of the mastery, effort & engagement, and independent learning grades.

The last report of the year has a short statement from the form tutor.

Oh, we also get the GL test score for each of maths and English, plus a reading age level.

We got the current working grade, the extrapolated GCSE grade and effort grades

Same here. And mine are year 11 and 10, it's been that way since they started.

I miss having comments from teachers. We get one online parents evening which is 5 minutes per teacher if they turn up. Then we get reports that contradict what was said in the online parent evening.

My daughter got ‘White 2’ or ‘Blue 1’ s 🤯

We get the same but do at least get the average and range for that cohort in each subject so it's easier to place where your child is. I think they are a bit rubbish personally

In Primary the teacher should know your child really well so you are more likely to get accurate personalised comments.
Contrast that with how many pupils a subject teacher will be teaching. More focus on results and attitude. They have lots of reports to write.

We get attitude (1-4) and progess - below expected, expected or above expected.
School value the attitude scores more than the progress scores - and state this.
We got a paragraph from his form tutor in the term 3 report, but not in the other 2.

We've got attendance percentage, a score per subject for attitude, then attainment target band for GCSE (which seems to be based on year 6 SATS and is bonkers, in that just because DC is good at maths doesn't make them good at art) and achievement band. Except for the subject that the teacher went on maternity leave just before half term where it's blank.

Not a single actual written word about DC and we couldn't speak to the form tutor at parents' evening either.

End of year 7 - we are in wales

attendance %
reading age
global grade

then each subject
grade
attitude to learning (1-4)
effort (1-4)
and then each teacher wrote a bit about what they have been doing and then more personal comment about DS,

Ok. So it's crap. But it's the same level of crap that's delivered elsewhere. Well, at least we're not being singled out 🤣

Oh just looked and we got thier Cat score plus each subject was developing/secure/exceeding and this year they showed the reports to the kids in school beforehand and then they had to answer questions on how they felt, what they liked about school, what they think they need to work on and these were included in the report

The distribution statistics table is quite helpful. DD3 got outstanding effort & engagement for most subjects, but only 'good' for art. It turns out that 0% of children were graded 'outstanding' for art. So it gives a bit of context.

I wonder when secondary schools stopped writing "proper" reports. I was at DD's school myself in the 90s and we got them then, detailed for each subject with comments.

We got comments too but they are picked from a bank of standard comments, they just change the name at the beginning.

We got percentage in tests and the class average as a benchmark and then grades for effort, attitude to homework and attitude to class.

We never had CAT scores or extrapolated predicted grades.

"We got comments too but they are picked from a bank of standard comments, they just change the name at the beginning. "

Had this in primary school. You'd think with DTs they'd be more inventive 🙄

I only once had to use statement banks, but even so, as I was aware that I might re-use some of the same language on several reports, I would do a careful double-check of twins' reports to make sure they were distinct.

We didn't get any written reports at all from DD's 11-16 school. We did get tickbox ones every term in KS3 and every half-term in KS4, though. I think the 1990s workload agreement specified only one written report per year, so perhaps the written reports were a trade-off for the more regular box-ticking.

I agree that percentages with nothing to calibrate against are useless. We used to give the group median (middle result) - which gave parents a good idea whether their child was bottom half, top half, close to the middle, etc.

This report seems quite pointless without any other info. I'm a teacher and I don't like writing reports but thank you for reminding me of the importance of the comments to add some context.

We get below, at or above level for each subject. Nicely coloured in. And the subject teacher can then select something from a pull down menu (I assume) as we have upteen identical comments of 'could read more around the subject'. No comment from form tutors.

Essentially you look at it and if there's anything coloured in yellow you'd bother to read, if it's all blue and green you can delete the file.

I have a big problem with all this working below/at/above expected level.

It’s all based off ks2 results, so if these are bad, expectations are low. I’ve had kids for parents evening in years 11, and explained that their child’s would have to work hard to get a pass. Parents have said, but how can this be, they’ve been working at expected level throughout school. Yes, but we didn’t expect them to do very well, so their expected level is “struggling to pass”.
Added to that we had the ludicrous statement that meant the grade above A (above) was E (Exceeding).
I’ve long said, we should give school results in the same way we do baby weights in the little red book. You get to know where your kid is in the school, from the 0-100th centile. You get a colour coded scheme that shows you what gcse grade this tends to equate to, at least for core subjects.
That way, you could see if your child was getting better or worse at each subject and it would be really easy to track their progress over time.
I’ve put this idea forward so many times now, and it’s always been shot down, mostly I think because it would be far too informative and you’d end up with far too many parents wanting to know why their students performance was slipping and what exactly the school planned to do about it.

God forbid the reports should actually tell parents anything useful!

here in wales they have yearly tests in maths and literacy. They are then given standardised scores and shown on a graph with previous years too so you can see if the are above or below average for thier age (and I think it’s only shown against kids born on the same month as them as this makes a difference especially in infants)
we don’t have SaTs ant there doesn’t seem to be the same pressure, they just do the tests without too much fanfare.

Thanks for explaining.

Once you know what level your child has been placed in, these are OK - but every report absolutely (imo) needs to state "your child has been evaluated against higher/average/struggling expectations"
But then, every low ability child has a negative comment on their report, which is I guess what they are trying to avoid.

Secondary Teacher here. We send hone 3 reports a year 2 just current working level (scale 1-4, which is explained) and scores on 3 behaviour areas focus engagement, preparedness. Once a year we add a comment. Once a year we have a face to face parents evening.

As a form tutor a chat about your child would not help with anything academic, just an overview of behaviour, attitude, punctuality gleaned from the behaviour points system. I see my tutor group for 20 mins a day and don't teach any of them.

In my subject after every assessment they are asked to write in their book their % and class average.