If your school does 3 year GCSE, what kind of reports in year 9?

[BishBashBoomer]

DS has received his first y9 report and it tells him target grade for the end of y11, if he is working in line with that target (working below target/on target/ above) and ‘approach to learning’ but no grade or phrase or whatever for how he is doing now. I’m a bit surprised that he’s only just started the course and the school are predicting grades already. Is this usual?

Weve had that information since Yr7. Current working grade, and how that (statistically) translate to how they would achieve at end of Yr11 (plus how they should do based on SATs results,🙄).

Is the current working grade a GCSE grade?

I have just looked at Ds's year 9 report, it is only a target for the end of KS3 which covers years 7,8 and 9 so an end of year 9 target grade and where he is now. We got 3 reports, one at the end of each term. His current grade was a GCSE grade but as they haven't learned the actual GCSE content it isn't a if he took it now but more of a meeting the targets of that year.

I think in all honesty the possible reason for giving year 9 students an actual GCSE target grade is to show at this current projection this is what we believe they could get. It gives them and the parents time to get the child to apply themselves if they are below where they want to be.

The school lists the target grade, their current grade, plus their attitude to learning ie good, outstanding, poor plus their approach to learning which was detailed in categories ie excellent self managers, lead their own learning, or go beyond the expectations of homework set.

Therefore if they fall into the outstanding and go beyond then they are likely to achieve very high grades.

I guess I can see the sense in a target grade (but not sure where it come from after one term of some courses like Business) but not having a current grade is what’s confusing us. Why might this be?

You need to ask school, but id guess the target grades are from his SATs.
And current grade missing is because - as you've mentioned - they aren't far enough through the course to accurately judge.

That makes sense. So how are they able to say if they are working at the target?

Our school has done the exact same and I called them about it this week, we're getting that info next term before parents' evening, might be worth talking to yours.

Ours don’t give them a target grade in first term of year 9 as there is a bit of movement with kids wanting to swap GCSE options.

You don't normally get anything that realistically correlates until Y11 November mocks in my experience. It's only now that I feel I have a reasonable idea of what DD is likely to get in August.

Before then it's generally an end of year target based on SATs/CATs and where they are in relation to that.

For most people, hopefully it's reasonably easy to see where they are in relation to that target and you just see steady progress year on year.

If you have a child with SEN or whose targets and achievement are out of whack, then my advice (having a SEN child and a complete mess of targets and grades) is to make friends with the staff and talk to them direct if you feel there are problems.

I am sure it never used to be this complicated before the whole tracking targets thing came in, but they are a very blunt tool and there seem to be a million ways for schools to do reports to parents.