Bloody Value added

[glamourousgranny42]

Can i please have a vent to my fellow teachers.
I teach an A level subject, have taught for 15 years, been a senior examiner and consistently get grade 1/2 observations. This year, my pass rate for AS has improved, A2 high grades have improved, both well above benchmark on all measurements.
BUT I have a lot of underachieving AS students and i know that despite everything i am going to be hauled over the coals because although these students passed they didn't meet their (often unrealistic) targets.
I am at a loss to know what to do. It just puts a downer on what should be a day to be proud of what my kids have achieved.

You'll go to school in September and answer to everyone about how your results weren't good enough. You'll feel rubbish about it for a few weeks.... And then you'll do the same thing next year.
It's crap!

Well done on your results today You worked hard and did the best and probably more for your students. That's all you could have done.

Please try and let it wash by you - it is total bollocks. If you know that your students are making progress hold your head up high. The system is mad - just do what you know in your heart is right for your students.

You cover your back by making a list of interventions that you did for each underachieving student, e.g. Revision sessions, contact home. Then you nosy at their other subjects to see if it was just your subject or if you can point out that they were underachieving across the board,

And make sure you highlight the positives.

Thanks folks.
Our VA as a center is generally poor. Most of my underachievers have done so in other subjects as well. But I will still get the microscope treatment. Noble, re the evidence of intervention, luckily i have that.
It is a strange system where as teachers we are never 'good enough'.

I'm no longer secondary, but I really feel it in my class. There's a huge range of ability in my mixed year class - some of those children have made great progress for them, but it will never be good enough for the scrutineers. Never mind 3 of the most able in the cohort moved to a different county and were replaced with 3 children who can't read and haven't been in school for a couple of years. We said 80% would be expected so why aren't 80% expected? Er, because they are entirely different children who've been in our school for less than half the year. Never mind we're a small school so each child is worth a big percentage. No wonder some schools "tweak" data. No wonder some schools focus solely on the children they can drag up to "expected". It's never good enough. It's a bit like when a child does an amazing piece of work and a teacher gives them 3 next steps in green pen. Enough. It's not good for anyone's self esteem or sanity.

You did the best you could! We all work hard and do the best we can for pupils. I have a lot of underachieving AS students - mainly because SLT took pupils who did not achieve a GCSE in my subject...

How does that work then? My minimum requirement was a B grade, because frankly, otherwise you are generally wasting your time to think you'll do well at A level if you can't scrape that at GCSE. We took people with Ds...and a couple who had dropped it in Y9 but now felt they'd do well at A level, despite now studying the subject since they were 14. Jesus wept!

I do have students who also got A grades, and students who got higher grades than target. But they will be focused on the U grades who failed - who I tried to predict a U for - and was told I MUST be aspirational and was forced to predict an E as a minimum. Now they will be telling me my predictions need to be more accurate.

I am old and stroppy and will tell it like it is if anyone speaks to me. (And my back is covered, because I'm cynical). They don't, of course. There are passive aggressive comments made in HoDs meetings which are clearly aimed at different people so I ignore it where possible.