Student review grades -attitude to learning and attainment grades

Spendless

tyllwyd wrote: »

If your DS is upset, would it be possible for him to have a word with the teacher after class and ask him what he should do to improve next time? Or put a question along those lines on the reply slip?

I can ask him. Unsure how DS will feel about it. I can cetainly put something on the reply slip though and fetch it up at parents evening, we haven't had a 'proper' one yet, just a meeting with form tutor. I got it wrong though DT attainment has stayed same whilst A2L gone down. It's English where A2L has also gone down whilst attainment has gone up 2 grades. There's a parent section you can log into on his school website, and loads of detail are logged and there's been no missed homework in either subject, so it's not that.

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

All I can say is just wait until they start on Challenge grades ...

For A2 / AS levels, they get a 'predicted' grade which is based on their GCSE grades - all of them, so if you do very well in some subjects but only middling in others, this will be marked down.

Then they get a 'current' grade (might not be the right name), ie what you'd probably get if you took the exam right now. If you've chosen subjects you enjoy, chances are this will be higher than your predicted grade, especially if you were the kind of child who decides what's worth putting effort into (and decided half your GCSEs were NOT worth putting effort into ...)

And finally, they get a 'challenge' grade. Which, you might think, would be at least as high as the highest of the other two, and unless you've already got As predicted should, you might think, be higher than the other two.

And yet, for some reason I never did fathom, DS3 had Cs for predicted, Bs or As for current, and in one subject only a C for his challenge, even though his predicted was at least a B.

??? Surely he could have been challenged - "pull your finger out lad and you could make this a B or an A".

Otherwise what does 'challenge' mean in that situation?

I have just found the the aspirational grades on the parent section I've just mentioned above as it gives predicted grades for each subject at end of yr 7, 8 and 9 and an aspirational one for the end of yr 9, though DS's made more sense as the aspirational grades were higher. I also ran thru the subjects looking to see what subject he was expected to get his highest grade in, really expecting it to be science, since he's been identified as being talented in this subject since he was in yr 4 and done various 'above and over' national curriculm levels since via his schools but it wasn't. The subject predicted for his highest grade (which was either 7c or 7b) was Dance. This is the child who wouldn't do the actions to nursery songs when I was taking him to toddler group, hasn't attended a school disco since he was 8 and has already told me he will be dropping the subject at the earliest opportunity.

On a more comprehendable note I've found the lost dinner tickets.

balletshoes

thanks OP for this thread - most of it is complete gobbledegook to me, but I guess its what I need to get used to (my DD is starting secondary school in September). I've barely got my head around the levels for attainment for KS2!

hardtoexplain

It's all rubbish, I still remember school (6 years and counting now) and comparing reports which were all the same levels and text except for my name (one teachers didn't even personalise with a name...)

ViolaLass

WhiteHorse wrote: »

As it's entirely subjective, it's all twaddle.

It's not really that subjective - I've just been working out grades for my classes for the first time. For effort grades (marked 1-4 in my school), I have to think about how many h/ws they have done or not, how they behave in class, whether they bring the right equipment etc. Most of these aren't subjective things, I just check my records. This means that were a parent to ask me about the grades, I could point to my markbook and say 'X has missed two h/ws out of 5 and didn't bring such-and-such equipment on three occasions' or whatever it may be.