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?!

DD3's school have moved to mastery levels for each individual subject. The expectations increase term on term, so their mastery level can change term on term, too. It makes more sense than the old system they had, where all students were given 'current GCSE grades' and then we had to extrapolate to work out where they might end up in year 11.

We get a comparison to the national data. I.e. are they working below expected standards, meeting standards or working to a deeper level for maths, reading, English, science. We get sats/test scores. We get a long written statement which includes next steps. We get how they meet the schools social objectives (kindness, respect, resilience etc). Ours are pretty good. You can tell that the teachers have got to know and understand each child.

DD's school offered their own special level of crap in KS3 when it came to reports.

One of the pieces of information was whether your child was working behind/at/ahead of expectations. You might think this was useful. But no!

"Expectations" was based on whether they were in line to get their predicted GCSE result, which was calculated based on SATS results.
If you had a child that had done particularly well in SATS then their GCSE predicted grade was 8/9.
However, teachers were also told (quite reasonably IMO) that they couldn't state that a Year 7 child was in line to get an 8/9 at GCSE as there was far too many things that could happen along the way.

So all the children with high SATs results and high GCSE predictions were marked as "working behind expectations". Even if, as happened in DD's case for one subject, they got 100% in every single piece of work.

I'd stick to looking at the attitude score. If your child has good attitude that's the best you can hope for :)

We don't even get test results; we get a score (from 1-4) in each subject for effort, attainment and independent learning, and a copy and paste written paragraph from their tutor to say well done. That's it. Absolutely pointless IMO.

I wonder if the size of the school matters here? We have 12 forms in each year group, so 360 in total. .. But then that means there are a lot of teachers as well, so that doesn't explain why the only comments a teacher can make is from the pull down menu. There is no place for a form tutor to make a comment on the table document we are sent.

year 7 going into year 8 here

I have her attainment grades but our school hasnt shared the GCSE target grades with us as yet
We also have scores in each subject for homework/behaviour and engagement in class
this ranges from Requires improvement to excellent

We also have a short statement from her tutor

Do you have access to a parent app with more information, something like Class Charts or Go4School?

DD is at a bog standard comp in a disadvantaged area although it was rated outstanding last time it had Ofstead well over a decade ago. She has an academic review before her reports in the autumn and summer term where we get a report before hand and can chat to her form teacher about her grades and any concerns. And then a full on parents evening, 5 mins per teacher that is back to being face to face in the Spring term.

I can see DDs progress on Go4Schools, her behaviour, attendance, grades in each assessment, working at grade and predicted grades and how they compare to last year and her overall predicted flight path at any time throughout the year.

Parent communication is taken seriously by Ofstead and is worth flagging next time they visit if sub par.

I think the issue with reports is that schools think parents want lots of reports throughout the year- most schools do 3 or 4, a year, at least. For secondary teachers, who likely teach a minimum of 150 students each fortnight, that's quite a lot of reports to write. So any comments very quickly become generic and copy/paste. There's also the sort of unwritten rule that you can't actually say anything negative, so everything becomes couched in positive language.

So, they become an exercise in data which is often a bit meaningless for parents. I think the only thing you can do is keep hold of previous reports and compare. If there appears to be a major downwards trend, then it's probably worth bringing this up!

If you'd prefer reports less often but with more detail, perhaps suggest this to the school?

With form tutors, in most schools if you have any concerns, the tutor would usually be happy to have a quick phone call with you or send an email about your child's progress through the year if you ask. Usually it's good to give a bit of warning so they can ask subject teachers for input.

My son got his expected GCSE grades 6-8, whether he was meeting expectations, exceeding or below and then attitude to learning. It says to speak to the teacher at parent's evening if they're getting below expectations but they'll have different teachers next year so I'm not sure how helpful that will be.

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.

• Not meaningless if you trust that your children are being educated by professionals who carefully curate a curriculum and assessment programme that matches age related expectations. Why do you think they'd be set something too hard or too easy for their age?

*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?!

• Did you not get regular mini-reports throughout the year? Do you not get info about their targets that you can compare with their results?

Same as at our school, since it went online you don't speak to form tutor.

We also find communication is poor. End of year report has below/at/above expected standard, effort in class, effort on homework. He gets an ‘effort for homework grades’ for subjects where no homework is ever set (we have an app so so can stay on his case with work set). Parents evening is once per year, online, often you can’t get a 5 min appointment with every teacher.
DS2 is not very communicative, I have no idea what he has studied this year or how he is doing really. He had a mediocre report earlier in the year (below expectations in some things, poor effort grades) and I went to speak with head of year about it, when she actually spoke to his teachers they all said the same things about poor concentration etc but nobody had bothered to contact us about it.
I get the impression if he is not throwing chairs and causing trouble there is nobody that really has any oversight. He’s been unlucky with form tutors, in theory they have one person that moves up the school with them, in practice he’s had 8 in 2 years.
I’m not sure what the answer is as I can see how many pupils a subject teacher must encounter over the course of a week ….

Is it a small school?
When DD was at school there were 270 children in her year. Teachers just don't have the time or resources to write comments on school reports.

Her reports had attitude to learning, currently working at and target grades.

We get three reports a year. The first two are letters and numbers: numbers for the attainment in each subject (and it lists what number they got previously and what the average was in the year group for that subject) and a letter for attitude for learning.
Then the last report we get the above letters and numbers plus a comment for each subject which is "areas for improvement" and is just one or two sentences.

This is quite interesting reading what lther schools do. The idea of basing you3 subject attainment off sats seems utterly bizarre.

We got 3 reports, (one at the end of each term), and each subject had an attitude mark and an attainment mark. The attainment were 5 categories from working significantly below expected to working significantly above. The school were very clear though that these are based on their own standards, subject specific, of where they feel particular years should be working at, not based on SATS or specific trajectories based on sats. This seems to work well to me but I concede it wouldn't work in most schools as the range of ability would be too wide. (We are grammar, and their 'expected' attainment is very high.)

They also had codes for each subject as to what they expected you to do. Eg, ask more when you don't understand, read more around the subject, spend more time on homework etc. If your child is getting mostly exceeding etc then it was things like keep the same level of attitude and commitment.

No extra comments were made but each child has a meeting with their form tutor each term to discuss how they feel about it, how they intend to go forward etc.

Dds had

Attitude to learning grade (1-3)
Attendance %
Late marks %
End of year exam %
Average class exam %

A small paragraph from each teacher.

Selective state grammar with 150 per year.

It’s a state school - about 150 kids per year. We get one full report a year and the other 2 are just numbers and grades etc. I have 3 kids so this year year 7 was a couple of weeks ago followed by a parents evening where you can have a 5 minute appointment with all the teachers, DS1 is year 11 and we had his just after Christmas followed by a parents evening to catch any issues before GCSEs fully kicked off and DD who is in year 10 had hers just after Easter.
we also have the ClassCharts app so kids are awarded positive (and negative) points from teachers so you can get a general feel for thier behaviour etc ongoing - it’s things like a home ent, positivity, curiosity, participation etc

Our Y7s get several sets of grades each year and they did exams in May. These were followed by a Parents' Evening.

Our school report sounds similar but they tell the class what the highest and mean was for tests so they know how they did.

We had a parents evening just over halfway through the year, spoke with teachers and got an overview of progress verbally, with a hard copy summary sheet. Attendance was mentioned briefly.
We had a letter around the same time outlining progress, attitude and encouraging words on improvement.
End of year report was as you describe, OP.

We can look up an overview at any point during the year which shows progress, targets, attendance, behaviour and so forth.
For me, the parents evening was akin to the written section of a standard school report.

DD's report has:

Attendance %
Number of positive/negative behaviour points
Attitude: 1-5
Progress made: Less than/Expected/Exceeding

We didn't get any reports or updates until the end of the second term but I'm hoping that someone would've let us know if there were any issues. DD seems to be on track though, for whatever her predicted grades might be.

DS1 is now in y10, we get very little info in his reports and that has been the case all the way through. No comments at all. Attitude grades from 1-4. Each subject graded as being below expected/expected/exceeding, based on the latest round of progress tests. And his maths/English predicted GCSE grades from KS2 SATS were always on there too.
Now suddenly in y10 end of year report we have been given their current GCSE grade level, based on end of year exams, along with attendance and "effort scores" 1-4 for lesson work/homework, again no comments at all. It's not very helpful, apart from indicating that he very likely has a LOT of work to do to pick his grades up (which is a bit annoying given that school feedback has been very very bland up to now and always indicated no problems). With hindsight I would probably have contacted the teachers separately away from parents' evening to ask a few more questions about progress along the way. Parents' evening itself has ever been a great environment for asking about lots of detail as the appointments are 5 minutes and quite focused on test results

At my kids’ school you get year 7 numbered grades which are supposed to be marked to the same standard as gcse, I think the lowest grades in her year might be a 1 or 1 minus, and maybe one or two in the entire year might get as high as a 5 or 5 minus. I think kids who are getting 4 or 4 minus are roughly on a path to get 9s by the time they do GCSE’s, and that the difference between say 3, 3 minus and 3 plus is quite significant.

Year 7 - we had exam grades and effort grades for each subject and a two or three-line comment from each subject teacher. There was also a longer comment from the form tutor (which mentioned DS speaking well in an assembly despite the report being issued the day before said assembly!)

The reports I got in the 1990s were much more detailed, with a whole page for each subject and a longer comment by each teacher.