I dont understand the school report!

thegirlintheattic

bikebarbie wrote: »

is this table relevant, or are there different tables by Council, School etc...

Gives a general idea but is not accurate for many children.

MarilynMonroe_2

Lordy, what happened to just reports saying A for effort / B for attainment etc? then a written bit from each teacher for each subject.
Easy to understand then and you knew eactly how your child was doing, I am baffeld by what you are all going on about.

gingin_2

We also had our first secondary school report and it was similar, albeit with a traffic light system for behaviour/ attitude but with a similar "aspirational" grade as you, which was confusing at first. I googled it and found the same chart as thegirlintheattic. Does it correlate with his Year 6 sats results? Ours did but was also a good way of finding out where his weaknesses are for new subjects he has taken on in High School.

If you are confused I am sure that his teachers would be happy to explain.

flora48

I pity the poor teachers having to subscribe to all this pointless drivel. As others poster have said parents want to know if their child is doing alright and is behaving in school. This smacks of someone inventing useless procedures to justify their postion.

Debbie_A_3

Schools managements need to read this sort of thread in order to realise the confusion that school reports cause. I have a foot in both camps. I am a secondary school teacher, whilst I have children in Year 10 and Year 7 at other schools.

As a subject teacher I have to enter grades (one to seven) for such things as effort, knowledge, behaviour, willingness to participate, etc, etc. When you teach a couple of hundred children this runs the risk of being formulaic.

As a form teacher, I get a global view of a whole class and I can see that little Jimmy, for example, got ones or twos across the board in everything apart from English where he got threes and fours. The parents will think that he has a problem in English. But I can see the global picture. Whilst most teachers were giving mainly ones and twos (maybe to predispose children to their subject at GCSE?), Mr Angry in English is in a huff and he is giving nothing higher than a three for anyone (he has had a bad term with the class, and they all have to do English in any case).

As a parent, I really want to know that answer to two questions:
(1) Is the subject teacher happy with my child's progress
(2) If not, why not
Instead they make me wade through masses of indecipherable data.

Aaaaagghhh! At least term has now finished
Debbie

Caroline_a

Whatever happened to 'could do better if tried harder'? Or is this smoke to show that none of the little darlings is anything but amazingly clever?

FBaby

I too got the first Y7 report which left me very confused. It gives the current performance, the school progress Target (not clear if it is individual target set by school or the overall school target) and same for school progress report at end of KS3. I did take that it was individual reports. What has left me confused is how low the aspirational targets are. My DD is considered T&G in Maths, current target 6b, end of KS3 expected 8C. Fair enough, but for instance, current performance in science is 5c, progress target at end of year is 5c, and at the end of KS3 is 6b. Surely the school expects her to progress in almost 3 years a bit better than one tiny grade?????

Overall, I am surprised how low the current performance has been set at in some disciplines like history and geography where it is only 3a and 4c, when she was a top pupil in her primary school and got excellent reports (with 'A's rather than a level) in those subjects. I would have thought these were quite low for a very good pupil for the end of 1st term in Y7 (she enjoys those subjects and did get very good attitude to learning).

I do think it is a pity that there isn't more explanation attached to the report full of numbers and letters! All I got is a note to say that if there is a *, it means that a higher challenged as been set, but again that doesn't make sense as she has a * for end of year 7 in Maths, at 6a, but then is already at 6b now, so I don't think it is very much of a challenge to expect her to reach a 6b in 7 months...Same in English... she got a 5b in her SATS, is now only at 5b, and only expected to reach 5a at end of the year....

Is it me or is the school not expecting a lot in terms of challenging? It is all so confusing!!!

Sambucus_Nigra

bikebarbie wrote: »

So in Yr 6 they are 11; but 2 years later, in yr 8 they are 14? So they have aged 3 years in 2?

globetraveller

Believe me, you won't find many teachers disagreeing with what is being said by parents here. I can almost give up any weekend in my next term as I have to wade through each report, knowing that parents just want to know if their child is doing well, behaving and if they have any difficulties. If they do have any difficulties or behaviour problems we have to phrase in such a way as would make it difficult for the parent to realise what is being said. (If we don't, we get it back from the Head and asked to change it to be more postive).
We need a plain English campaign!

gingin_2

FBaby wrote: »

Fair enough, but for instance, current performance in science is 5c, progress target at end of year is 5c, and at the end of KS3 is 6b. Surely the school expects her to progress in almost 3 years a bit better than one tiny grade?????

QUOTE]

This was exactly the same for me. Science was the confusing one. DS was also predicted a 6b despite getting 5a in SATS and really having a brilliant knowledge about this kind of thing. French also made no sense - he was predicted a 5a at 14 but he's only just started French so I don't know how they can predict his results in 3 years when he can only tell you the really basic stuff he's just learnt, like everyone else. The english and maths made sense as it correlated with his sats results and the general feedback from Primary.