School Reports and Teacher Feedback

[welbury]

When I wer a lad, some 35 years ago, our school used to assess at the end of each term, based on the term exams and day to day work. Each class in turn filed up onto stage in front of the whole school. We had to line up in order based on the previous terms ranking, all spread out across the front of the stage, top of the class on the right hand side, then 2nd, etc, all the way to bottom place, right over on the left-hand side. The Head then went through the new term's positioning, starting with bottom first... usually with a few chastening words for the regular poor soul who took that last place. You had to move from your old position to your new one. One year, with my parent's going through a divorce, I tumbled from lofty 3rd to 2nd bottom, to howls of derision from the Head barsteward himself and the whole school. Your position in class was then pinned on the main notice board for the next term, for all to see, and lest you might forget, positions were read out again publically at the parent's evenings and you were given a sheet of paper as a keepsake (which I still have to this day). Every term end, every year. Did my confidence the world of good . Looking back, the place was totally Dickensian. My next school was a breeze after that; in fact, much of life has been, compared to those days..

I'd still like to have some comparisons for DD and DS though

[scarlett]

I think the info can be helpful - when looking at future career aspirations etc it could be very helpful. I get pretty fed up of : they are doing fine - they are on target..... on target for what ? 5 C's or 10 A*'s at GCSE.

I also once asked if the "targets" were individual to the child or the form / intake .... the tutor didn't know

Herman......I think it's because they don't really know.All 3 of my children were given " individual " targets of the standard 2 sub levels....and all 3 have exceeded these levels sometimes in just a few months.

I don't listen to this sort of predictions anymore.Children are individual and I think teachers just tell us the target thing to pacify us.I just do my own thing with my children and don't worry any more if they appear behind etc.....I just work with them at home and would rather not know what level etc the teachers are worrying about........


Just read your post, Welbury....I would have been throwing up all the way to school if that was me....

[scary mum]

I agree that it is useful to know what you are aiming at. At DS's school they have end of KS 3 targets which are based on the KS levels, level 6, 7 etc. They then track them with a traffic light system which is great for seeing if they are on target, but no help to know if it is a hight target or a low target. For example if they have a target of 7c in one subject that might mean they are good at a subject, or it might mean that they are slightly on the weak side compared to their peers. It doesn't matter to me how their peers do, but I do like to know whether the expectations are high, low or medium - presumably a mixture of those for different subjects, but I do think if you know roughly where they stand it helps. I have found that at parents' evenings they are usually willing to tell you how they are doing compared to their peers if necessary. As an example, my older DD once was regularly scoring about 80-85% in her French tests, but her teacher told me that she was struggling slightly to keep her place in the top set as a lot of the others were scoring 95% regularly. This helped me to understand that while she was quite competant at French, she wasn't a superstar! (only in my eyes anyway ).

[welbury]

Just read your post, Welbury....I would have been throwing up all the way to school if that was me....

yes, Sunday evenings especially were not much fun. It goes without saying that my children's happiness at school is paramount.

[mike1880]

It depends on the peer group as well.

I'm not remotely concerned how well our son is doing compared to the others. Unless he goes to Oxbridge he's currently with the cleverest group of people he's ever likely to be with in his life, as I often feel I have to remind him "just in case". For example - his school provides several members of the UK Maths Olympiad team; if he's in the bottom third of the maths group (I think he probably is) what does that actually mean when the "competition" is that kind of standard?

Mike

[scarlett]

Mike...it must be the bumwine you're secreting in the ribena......

[Chelmsford mum]

I think I am with Mike on this really (if your child is at a selective school or in top streams etc) My two older girls are at a school where the vast majority comes out with a majority of A* grades and A at a level.Therefore if they weren't at the top - who cares really.They will still do fine.
Also I work on the premise that no news is good news with good schools. I had this reinforced when my eldest's friend had a meeting with parents and a subject teacher as she was slipping in that area and they wanted to help tackle it.Also their school runs various "clinics" (terrible title) in various subjects which girls are encouraged to join if struggling.

I am more concerned to develop them in their social skills because let's face it, the important competition happens after the exams, in seeking work in the real world.

[mystery]

The only reason I would want to know how a child was doing relative to the rest of the class would be to second-guess how my child was feeling about things, and how this might affect their motivation.

The other really useful facts are how your child is doing relative to the national average, and relative to their own native ability. I also want to know if they are being taught the curriculum at a pace that will enable them to get Level 3s at KS1 and Level 5s at KS2. I don't want to hear phrases like "on target" (on target for what?) above expectations (whose?). I want to know what the child's weaker areas are so I can support at home in a sensible way.

There is so much "differentiation" of work at school these days, and not always well done, that I have become rather paranoid as to whether my children are being given the opportunity to achieve the results I think they are capable of, rather than taught to a grade the teacher thinks they are capable of. Even some of the secondary school maths schemes text books are written for year 7 onwards according to what grades you are aiming for at GCSE. What's the hope of achieving your A* if you start off in a lower set than the one you are capable of for some reason?

Do I get any of this information? Very little at primary school currently. I don't honestly know if some teachers and heads really know why they bother with parents' meetings other than for the sake of having parents' meetings. I'm at the point where I would not bother going at all, except I think if I don't go this might be the one time when they actually wanted to give me some information. I think next time I am going to read those lists, but I'm not sure it's worth the effort. My husband reads them upside down, but I'm convinced they sit there with a fake set for people like him as everything he has told me has turned out to be incorrect one way or another.

Large state grammar school has been the best supplier of useful information so far for older child, this has been accurate, up to date, useful and intelligently put together.

[doodles]

Just need to be careful here. I remember driving home from school berating DS1 for getting something like 47% in a science test and when he managed to get a word in edgeways it was to tell me that actually it wasn't that bad as the boy genius in the class had only got something like 60%

Better to know that they are working to the best of THEIR ability.

[Looking for help]

I too became very good at reading mark and results lists upside down at junior school but unfortunately the senior schools seem to use lap tops and it would be positively rude to peer over the top don't you think ?

I am so nosey too, I think that is my problem, and perhaps if the teachers were using laptops my evil plans would be foiled So far so good, only paper lists of children and levels and marks, so I can keep getting the information I require to keep myself happy. To be honest I'm not interested in names or anything, just a rough idea of how he's doing in his class....we had a problem with science recently, and despite the teacher not really having much to say about my son, I could see he was nowhere near the bottom of his set, and that cheered me a great deal. As she was talking to someone in the sky or so it seemed when we were there I had no difficulty executing my wicked plan

Mike is also right, and I probably was not so bothered with my others at top performing school, however I absolutely need to keep on top of things with my youngest, and will continue to develop ways of discerning the information I need to keep him going to the best of his ability. When we saw his maths teacher, he said he was doing really well, in the top 2 or 3 in the year, which is great. My OH asked the maths teacher 'what should he be doing to keep this up, are there extension activities etc that would help keep his interest ?', the teacher replied, 'Why would he want to do that?' We are by no means pushy, but the lessons of the past two years have taught us that you can't afford to take your eye off the ball.