Understanding Primary School Grades

[Deleted User]

zagfles wrote: »

This always confuses me - it's a ridiculous system, the higher the number the higher the grade, but the lower the letter the higher the grade! It's so counter-intuative, if A is better than B, then 1 should be better than 2!

This was why I posted, as using common sense to determine which end was up, wasn't working!!:D

zagfles

Softasputty wrote: »

It confuses me at times and I'm a teacher! The early years foundation stage profile which covers nursery and reception children is constantly changing and even more complex and does not link numerically to key stage 1 and 2. Nevertheless, Mr Gove and others are determined to make up formulas to try and make it fit without really knowing what they are talking about. I wish they'd be brave enough to follow other European countries who start formal schooling at 6.

Agreed, but here, people like the loony chair of Ofsted reckons it should be 2 :eek: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24823058

We are encouraged to share academic levels with 6 and 7 years and give them targets for this, that and the other. Too much time is focused on testing and not teaching I'm afraid. :eek:

Yes, all tick boxes rather than actually doing what in the kids' best interests. Our school had to have a split year group for a couple of years - reason was there were 35 kids in one year and 50 in the year above, with 3 teachers between them.

Common sense would say to have two classes of 25 in the higher year group and one for the 35 in the lower year, but this didn't tick the box of "thou shalt not have more than 30 children in a class". So they had to have a split year group which was far worse that having a few more kids of the same year in a class. But as long as the govt can use the sound bite of smaller class sizes to convince stupid people to vote for them, who cares?

socks_uk

Please bear with me while I try to post a scanned image of something I typed out for parents at the school I work at... I will edit this line if I manage to upload the image.

socks_uk

WOW! That's big! Sorry!!!