Min. Level 5 required for Grammar School??

[Tinkers]

DDs year 4 teacher thought DD would have no problems getting into GS and thought she would do better the than our local school. Year 5 teacher didn't think she had a cat in h Ells chance.
By the time we saw her year 6 teacher she had already taken the test and got her score back. We already knew the answer. However he forgot and was surprised when we told him where she was going.

When I got her year 5 report I had to go and see her teacher as I was very surprised she had made no apparent progress in reading from year 4. He looked at her year 4 report and agreed with me, so reassessed her. Seems that she was assessed by her ability to read out loud, which is something she isn't great at even with me. He reassessed her by actually asking her questions about what she had read to see if she understood.

The primary school has since been inspected by Ofsted, and slated for its English teaching...

[Guest55]

This is getting WAY off-topic!

The OP can be reassured that level 4 students will be fine - there are many excellent primary school teachers who do know their class well.

[mystery]

OOOOOOH! That makes me feel ever so bad for Tinkers.

I think there have been a lot of helpful answers which are "on topic" allowing for the fact that discussions develop and flourish as they would in real life. I think level 4 all round would be a bit weak at some grammars but this child sounds like clear level 5s apart from one writing assessment. Grammars are not all the same in the standard required either to pass or feel "comfortable" on entry. I don't know Wallington.

Yes there are a lot of teachers who are good at assessing children at various things and there are a lot who do quite flawed assessments - mostly probably because it is so time consuming and by the time you've assessed a whole class properly the picture has changed anyhow. I wouldn't like to quantify the proportion of teachers who do accurate / inaccurate assessments. Writing has to be one of the most iffy ones to assess and maths the easiest.

The reading out loud problem we hit upon very young. One of my DDs was judged poorly at reading for a long time because her reading out loud was very choppy. It then affected what she was given to read by school and what was expected of her. It was a big pain. It then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if you are not careful because the vocabulary growth is stunted by reading limited books.

[Guest55]

Mystery - it's not Tinkers that I was commenting about.

It's the people that are consistently rude about teachers on slim evidence.

The OP was asking about their child ...

[Yamin151]

Seems straightforward to me, your dc qualified for grammar, your dc is meant to be there and will be fine, whatever the levels say. Far easier to be judged 'less' able than 'more' able, I mean to say, it would be easy for a dc to have an off day and not do so well in a sat test for example, not so easy for a child to have a one off flash of brilliance that doesn't reflect their normal ability.

[mystery]

Mystery - it's not Tinkers that I was commenting about.

It's the people that are consistently rude about teachers on slim evidence.

The OP was asking about their child ...

Which people?

[Peridot]

I don't know what planet teachers are on who think they can assess English writing and predict the future so well, particularly at primary school. Some teachers' absolute certainty makes me doubt their judgement (in all respects) all the more.

It may be you mystery! It sounds like both you and Tiffinboys have been very unlucky at your primary schools if your teachers can't assess accurately. Most primary teachers I know are really not like that. The teachers my children had (with one notable and astonishing exception but she's left now!) took painstakingly great care to do this properly. With OFSTED combing through every bit of data related to progress these days no teacher should be able to get away with messing this up.

[tiffinboys]

I can never imagine to be rude to any teacher and nor I expect them to be 100% accurate all the time. Like others, I mentioned our experience with teachers' assessment. DC easily got SAT level 6 in Maths, as we expected. Teacher's assessment in the yearly report, even after getting the SATs results, was level 5. In English, we expected that all the top set would take level 6 test. DC was not entered, despite being on the top table in the top set. Surprised, we called the School's office to speak to the form teacher. We were given impression as if none has taken level 6 test. Few weeks later, DC found that one of the girl had taken level 6 test. We were then told that this test being new, just 5 or 6 students have been entered as experiment. As far as I know, two of these students got level 6. DC didn't take this test so we would never know. Teacher's assessment was level 5 through out and DC also sat for and got SAT level 5. To be honest, once we had the place in the school of our preference, SAT levels were not important to us. Learning was our concern. At that stage, SATs were more important to the School.

At Tiffin, DC is doing much better in English than in Maths. I remember Guest55 mentioning many a times that KS2 SAT level 6 is not the same as level 6 in KS3. And I would readily agree with that.

I hope that Guest55 doesn't think that we are being harsh with our teachers. I have never raised the assessments with our teachers, though I have often asked about how to improve the learning. We follow the same approach at Tiffin and found it very useful specially with a 'strict' teacher. He is lot better now.

I have often asked guest55 for her opinion and advise, which she has so readily given. Thank you, guest55 for that. Please don't think that we are being rude to any teacher if we air our experience.

[Guest55]

Tiffinboys - it was not you.

It is very possible for a child to be teacher assessed as level 5 in maths and yet pass the level 6 test - that is the problem!

By the way the KS2 tests were reintroduced at the same time in reading and maths but some schools did not realise in the first year.

[tiffinboys]

I am so relieved. Thank you.