Concerned about progress report

[EvangelicalAboutButteredToast]

My child’s year 7 progress report hit yesterday and even though they scored mostly Excellent on their attitude to learning scores they scored quite poorly in their progress marks.

i’ve been rereading the email explaining these scores and they said even if the child had been attaining a high level in subjects it doesn’t necessarily mean they are hitting their government target grade

in one subject where my child has received a ‘below’ grade I know there’s been significant disruption in lessons across the school year. The teacher was a very young supply ECT and would spend 45 mins chasing kids down the corridor in one instance! I did write an email over the level of disruption being reported to me but it does make me wonder if they actually covered the full curriculum this year. My child scores highly in tests (I get emails confirming this) is given copious points for lessons contribution and always does homework so the only measure I can think of that’s failing is the ability to teach the curriculum.

Any thoughts?

I would suspect your child has been identified as a high attainer from their SATs results, and perhaps is achieving more like an average student currently. Therefore they can still be doing well, just not as well as the SATs predict they would be doing.

Our reports cone full of "attitude is the most important aspect of this report" style comments.

Oh that’s interesting! So the SATS set an individual target as opposed to the government setting a generic target? I need to understand how it works so I can understand what’s going on.

They got a general score of ‘Meeting’ across most subjects but did get a below in a core subject that’s constantly disrupted by poor behaviour which they are really competent at knowledge wise. Then ‘below’ for DT which they enjoy and significantly below in RPE which they constantly receive praise for - so I was scratching my head about that.

Im starting to think from what you’ve said the ‘Meeting’ descriptor is not such a bad thing after all.

Some schools use flightpaths from sats to measure/report progress.

So a child who scored highly in (maths & english) sats, may be considered to be making below average progress in say PE even if doing averagely. A bright child with poor motor skills could be doomed for practical subjects.

That makes sense. It’s clear I haven’t a clue how any of this is calculated. I did send an email to try and glean more info re. measures for this grade so perhaps the school might fill in he gaps for me. I had t considered the SATS connection. They did so well in SATS so it would make sense.

These reports with 'meeting', 'exceeding', etc. are all well and good but often are generic and thus uninformative.

I would contact your DC's teachers directely via email and ask for specific scores like tests and classwork and even homework and how this compares to the teacher's expectations, the teacher's assessment of your DC's ability and the results in the rest of the set. Also, I would ask what your DC needs to do to improve or extend.

This will be mostly because their primary successfully gamed the SATS. I taught a kid with ridiculously high targets for his GCSEs and when I looked into this a colleague said "oh, X primary - that makes sense!"

Regarding the disruption in that one subject. You would be surprised how hard it can be to manage a group of year 7s these days. Whoever the teacher. There are some extensive behaviour issues in KS3 almost everywhere. I find it astonishing when I remember how scared I and my friends were of authority at 11.

Do the numbers mean anything. His numbers for meeting are 5=

They should explain numbers on the reports. (Why some schools don't is beyond me).

5= could mean anything. Could mean on track for grade 5 at GCSE (though way too early to say this), could mean "we have a scoring system of 1 to 5 where 5 is best (or worst)". Etc. Very school specific.

I don’t think that want to explain it as I guess then parents (like me) will moan more. I wondered about GCSEs too but then where it said ‘significantly below’ it still said 5= so I don’t think so.

i remember getting confused about this until one of dds teachers explained it. I have twins, one academic one fine. The fine one got better progress scores than the academic one (both good for attitude/homework).

they didn’t do SATS (covid) so were given a progress target when leaving primary. This was what they were predicted to be able to achieve at gcse so graded graded from 9 and we weren’t told what it was.

academic one had a predicted grade of 7 so when she was working at that level equivalent she got a met. Fine one had a 5 but she hit her stride in secondary and was regularly working above that so got an exceptional.

they revisited them when they started ability streaming in year 9 and again at the start of yr 10 for GCSEs. The never bothered moving the 7 (I think it looks better for the school if the kids exceed their progress grade?) but did move the 5 to a 7.

end of yr 10 now and just did first round of mocks/parents evening. It’s only now they have actually become useful. Less for academic one who is doing well but for t’other she has found exam technique tough and had a few ropey results. Having the progress scores to benchmark against made for a super helpful chat (she bombed one of the subjects she wants to do for a level so was quite upset but hopefully all technique not knowledge/ability so can fix).

obviously every school is different and my friend who’s kids are at a level/uni stage said her main focus was always on attitude. I do use the progress grades as more of a barometer though.

I’ll be honest - I hope those numbers aren’t linked to GCSE grades as a 5 won’t get them the career they were hoping for. I guess I will continue to grope around in the dark until they start to organise streaming

Attitude is all good.
But if a less academic child a heads up on whether likely to pass GCSE maths and English is helpful, so that tutors / other intervention can be done.

Year 7 is far, far too early to be worrying about GCSE grades and careers! Just support pro learning behaviours in your child and talk positively about what they can do and have achieved. The strongest predictor of how he'll do is the educational background of his parents.

Children develop and mature at different rates.

The young man I mentioned with the unrealistic GCSE targets has matured significantly at A-level.

The attitude to learning marks are all excellent and good and their father has the career they would like. I’m not as bright though so I’ve brought the DNA bar down unfortunately.

Aw @EvangelicalAboutButteredToast don't talk yourself down. School grades aren't the be-all and end-all. Is DC happy? Does DC have friends and interests?

Teacher here. Yep, if a child's prior attainment scores in SATs / CATs are very high, their target grades will be very high, so it's hard to meet them and sometimes almost impossible to exceed them. It's a crap system tbh and not very motivating for higher ability students. My own dc were in that situation, but obviously as teacher parents we explained to them why they were never getting great progress grades! It's rubbish that lots of schools don't explain this to parents or kids.

Does the school not have information on its website around how they monitor progress/grade results? This should be a documented policy somewhere, my dd is also in year 7 and the school explained this system at the parents transition meeting and my dd also understands it so has a full understanding of where she is at in her end of year exams and has been pushing herself to exceed her ME (she’s exceeding her minimum expectations across the board, got a mix of expected and greater depth at SATs but very average primary).

For info they grade equivalent to GCSE, so her ME is mainly grade 6 with a couple of 7/8, and she’s currently achieving mostly 7-9 from what she’s told me. A few random subjects she scores lower (PE/art). Different schools may not be as good at monitoring progress though - dd’s school is not great results wise but has recently joined a high performing academy trust so that may be why.

What marks are they getting in homework, tests, assignments, etc? Generally good marks along with annual report saying good attitude and trying hard usually mean the child is doing very well indeed. Annual reports always seem to be confusing and contradictory, as you don’t really know what metric the school are reporting on. Actual marks in work done seem to be a better indicator. We always told our son to aim for over 75% and it gave him a target to aim for and exceed. He still does it now to get him his First at uni and now his professional exams as an actuarial graduate. That was after yo yo ing reports year on year at school from different maths teachers some saying he was doing very well, others saying could try harder! Yet his work and test results in maths were consistent year on year!

Honestly @EvangelicalAboutButteredToast don’t worry. I had a similar mindset as you and my mate told me to relax with the wisdom of having kids a couple of years older. My 5er is on track for 7s 8s and one or two 9s if she pulls her socks up. My friends son was exactly the same - he went from a 4 to an 8 between mock gcse and actual maths gcse.

the concern I had with miss 5 was that she would be pigeon holed as ‘fine’ and not pushed. Didn’t happen. Teachers were great and she really found her feet and what she loves doing. She’ll take a different route to her sister who is a hardcore nerd but she’ll bang it out the park.

oh and miss nerd was totally obsessed with being a dr at 11. Now at 15, can’t even remember why she thought she’d be good at it (all those people….). It’s a brilliant time to watch them change and grow.

So the technicalities of this is that each student has a "target" grade based on their KS2 scores that is set (either by FFT or equivalent) and then is used to measure progress 8 at GCSE. Between y7 and y10 there is the wild hinterland where there are no rules, nothing set, and nothing makes sense.

We "track back" and look at what a high attaining y7/8/9 might be doing etc and create descriptors. They are given their target grades from y7, but essentially it's scrabbling around in the dark at KS3. I would be looking at their books, and having a conversation if unclear.

If it does refer to GCSE grade 5 you would need to know if that means a 5 in year 11 or they are currently working at a grade 5. There is a huge difference in the two. We found some subjects worked on current level and some on predicted grades which made understanding the reports difficult.