U.K. Secondary report

[MissMelanieH]

Hi I’m just wondering if anybody can tell me, do U.K. secondary schools still use flight paths to measure what a child “should” be achieving?

dc is in year 7, got exceeding in all areas in SATS in year 6 but his spring report is all working towards and working below with only two subjects at the required standard.

his behaviour and attitude scores are all good and outstanding so I’m not sure if something has gone “wrong” and I should be worried or if this is normal for this point in the school year?

this is my first experience of secondary so any words of wisdom would be appreciated.
thanks.

Honestly you need to ask the school as there is no uniform standard.

It could be they are measuring against his incoming standard, so expecting more of him.
Or against an objective standard.
But that objective standard could be for now, end year 7, or even end year 9.

Was there no explanation text included?

Ask his form tutor.

Also some subjects are new in secondary as distinct or serious subjects, so they might score lower, eg French, drama, music.

Furthermore SATS give no indication of motor skills needed for eg PE and Art.

Ask the school, I would be concerned too tbh. Is it a grammar school?

The Government gives schools a score on how well the children do at GCSE based on their SATs scores. The prediction is based on averages so might not make sense for the individual child. But a child who did really well on their SATs will have a higher target than one that got an average score.

But each school will interpret interim data and report it differently. You need to know whether this is based on their individual target or an expectation of what they want all the children to achieve by end of year 7.

I found out how my DCs school did it but searching on the school website. They had a whole page on school reports in the parents section.

I will have a search of the website now, thank you!
thanks everybody for your quick replies…I’m trying to get the balance right between supporting and encouraging him (slight tendency to do the minimum required) without being overly pushy and demanding.
all your thoughts are much appreciated.

My son was exceeding in all his SATS, 100% in all the maths ones, and then when he joined secondary they did CAT tests and they combined these scores to give them a base level for predicted GCSE results. For my son this was 7-9. So whenever he gets a report from school they are measuring him against whether he is on track to get those grades in a subject. So if he is ‘working at’ then that means he is on track for achieving that level of grade, but if he is ‘working towards’ then it might mean he is on track for a 5 or 6 which is still not considered a bad grade. My son struggles with art and DT and is never going to be ‘working at’ for those subjects if the level he is aiming for is a 7-9!
At the end of year 7 he was working towards for English, but this year with a different teacher he is working at again, so it can be down to teacher, class, and just settling into secondary, which is no mean feat!

Thanks @SuperSue77that’s really helpful and sounds similar to what’s happened here.
plus all the “working below” subjects are subjects he didn’t do at Primary school.
it seems a bit mad to me that a secondary school can see that a child gets exceeding in Maths and English in year 6 and draw the conclusion from that, that he will get 7-9 grade GCSE in DT!

If it's like my DD's secondary school, their reporting system made it virtually impossible for a child that was "exceeding" in SATS to get "working at required level" unless they basically get 100% in everything. I'd focus on the really positive behaviour and attitude scores and the actual marks they are getting in tests etc. And tell your child to ignore the less than positive gradings.

Oh really @RedSkyDelights? What a shame for kids who achieve well at primary…especially if they’re kids who worked their socks off for it in the first place.
yes there’s a lot to be proud of and he does know that.
thanks!

Ours goes by whether they are working at "age standard" which is much more palatable, and easier to understand.

Yes definitely. I had huge argument with the school about DD's KS3 reports - and pointed out disincentiving it was for a hard working, high achieving child who was doing well to get such low grades in their report. And, for a child who is used to getting "exceeding", actually getting "expected standard" feels like they are doing less well, let alone "working towards".

The subject that stuck in my mind was one where DD had done amazingly well, had been praised to high heaven about her amazing work, progress and work ethic by her teacher but when her report arrived it said she was "working towards". DD had got (out of 50) 50, 50, 50 and 46 in the assessment tests they'd had. Teacher confirmed that because DD had high SATS results, she would have had to get at least 48 in the last test to have got "working at" and it was actually impossible for her to get "exceeding" as the tests weren't hard enough to measure that.

(It might be different in your school of course. I'd talk to actual teachers and take with a pinch of salt).

Honestly you need to ask the school as there is no uniform standard.
I think that this question comes up every year.
It's as if the teachers have got together and said, "what can we do to really bamboozle and upset Y7 parents? I know: let's invent some reporting scheme that is nothing like any previous description of their child. And then not explain the scheme to them"

Then when you get the hang of it, they completely change the report format!

🤣🤣🤣
very true!

If this report is because he got exceeding in his SATs and they've set impossible to meet targets based on that, please do feed back to the school how incredibly demoralising and unhelpful his report is.

Given that it is an in-house reporting system, it is entirely within their power to change it to something more sensible.

Ugh, flight paths and targets.

I have detested these the whole way through secondary. Ours weren't based on SATS as DD's cohort didn't sit them, but on CATS and banding test results.

I pointed out to school that it is demoralising and stressful for a child to be set targets they cannot achieve. They said targets can't be changed and yes, they don't take into account SEN or whether the child is a maths whizz and useless at English or vice versa.

I found conversations with teachers most useful, but it's not been until Y11 and mock results that I have actually felt I have a realistic grasp of likely grades this summer.

They said targets can't be changed

They absolutely don't have to be given to parents though. The school is perfectly able to give parents different targets that can be changed.

That would actually be far more sensible. Have whatever government tracker system is mandated behind the scenes.

And then something appropriate for the individual child on reports.

Mine used to come home upset that Child A in the class had got "exceeding" whereas she was "well below target" with the exact same score.

It's not exactly good for anyone to have to sit and explain that little Jane got well below target because she's deemed to be clever, whereas little Johnny got exceeding because the tracker suggests he's a bit thick.

It is a baffling system for sure. I’m very glad I posted though this thread’s put my mind at rest a little anyway.

Tbf it is probably not the teachers who may hate it as much as anyone. More likely SLT.

I recall having a new set of gradings for year 7 one year and one student who was very very able had a target of 3 (I think maybe based on GCSE number grades?) – I had to explain to them and indeed their parents that they were never going to meet the target because it required use of past and future tense (MFL) and we didn't teach past tense in year 7!

Otherwise what @noblegiraffe said – please feed back to the school.

Otherwise what noblegiraffe said – please feed back to the school.
My encounter with this ridiculous system was about 20 years ago and it had probably been going for a time before then. If OP's school was going to respond to feedback (you can see from this thread that plenty of parents over the years have been confused by this) then I'm sure that they would have done it by now.

The reverse can be true too - my daughter came out at grades 4-6 in year 7 (no SATS to use as she was the year that didn't do them) yet is aiming for 8s and 9s. Her end of term tests and mock results have supported her aspiration, yet those stupid 4-6 grades have led to her teachers lowering her predicted grades which she has found really demoralising. I challenge these 'predictions' at parents evening and teachers agree they are not representative of how well they think she will do, yet they crop up on every report, including in yr 11! We'll see how well she really can do in August :-)

@SuperSue77your poor dd what a shame, let’s hope she proves them all wrong though.

Thank you - she is planning to!

I find this system difficult to understand and frustrating. My DS is in year 9. Every time he gets a report there are a couple of subjects where he is “working towards meeting his academic potential”. I follow up with his teachers as there is no explanatory info on the report. And they usually reply with some stuff about how it’s all fine because of his target grades. This time I found out that in one of the subjects that he was listed as “working towards” a week after I got the report he did an assessment and got the highest score in his year! The reports seem pointless. I don’t know what he is achieving. I think the system changes in year 10 so maybe that will make more sense.