Levels in Y7

[llol39]

Hi Guest55

She's been given a target level of 6a for Maths, current Y7. Thanks very much for the link, had a quick peek and it looks very useful.

DS aged 7 has declared this week that he's "rubbish at maths" he's decided this all by himself, as no one here has told him that So that's going to be interesting trying to motivate him!

[Guest55]

Hi - by specific targets I mean what areas of maths is she not achieveing that would make her 6a?

When we do tests we give detailed feedback so students know what their weaknesses are; a test mark on its own does not really help as you have found out!

[moved]

SIPs don't exist anymore and haven't for three years or so. All Bucks schools have an adviser 'link' to the LA ... this is a different role though.

Bucks is suggesting that schools keep levels for tracking -

Quite different from London then. Our SIPs visit termly and no one that I've met is considering keeping levels.

[llol39]

Hi Guest55

DD was presented with a piece of paper with this (in a nice table though)

Chapter 2 Number 85% Mean = 77% 6b -1
Chapter 8 Algebra 78% Mean = 75% 6b -1
Chapter 13 Coordinates & Symmetry 88% Mean = 82% 6b -1
Chapter 10 Graphs 82% Mean = 83% 6b -1
Chapter 4 Calculations 89% Mean = 80% 6b -1

Then she'd written a note to say "to get to my target level I need to improve my algebra and graphs".

I really struggle with how they do things at her GS. She's on her 4th maths teacher so far, they have to keep their shared textbook at school. All of her previous exam/test papers have to be kept by the teacher. This seems madness to me as surely you need to refer back to them to highlight your "weak" areas. So it all seems a bit strange to me!

[Guest55]

OK - not terribly informative! Get her to look at the website and see which bits of level 6 she is struggling with then she can work on those.

Do they have access to Mymaths?

[llol39]

Hi, yes they do have access to mymaths, so we'll have a look at that too. Just don't like being in the dark so much!

Thanks again

[Guest55]

Do feel free to PM me - four teachers in a year is not great.

[erisindevon]

Thanks for all your input - that's helpful. As I say, I'm not at all concerned - just a bit frustrated that the school doesn't put the levels in any kind of frame of reference.

My friends have children at the local boys' grammar, and their results are presented in a format at the opposite end of the spectrum - very complicated data tables which gives each child a national percentile and year group percentile for each subject. Possibly OTT, but I can see the appeal

[pheasantchick]

My son's monitoring report has the following headings on the table.

Indicative grade (grade at end of is)
Current attainment (+last term's attainment)
Progress
Class work -quality
Class work - focus and behaviour
Organisation of equipment
Homework punctuality
Homework quality


The first two columns have 'levels' (5/6/7 ), and the rest have numbers where 1 is outstanding, 3 is good, and 5 is cause for concern etc.

Also, we have a table of exam results and year 7 averages.

There's a lot of numbers to look at, but it's not too bad.

[bikeman]

And remember that the levels set are individual targets with no reference to the class average or the national curriculum expectation. All the school wants is to show that they moved your child up 3 grades every year. If the child moves up from primary at a low point they are probably not on track for a decent GCSE and you will only know when it's too late.