End of KS3 targets

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K76
Posts: 42
Joined: Fri Mar 06, 2015 8:41 am

End of KS3 targets

Post by K76 »

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone knows how end of KS3 targets relate to the KS2 SAT scores.

My DD is in Year 8 and she is one of those schools that does KS3 over 2 years and GCSE over 3 years. It is an upper school not grammar.

Her end of year 8 targets for Maths, English and Science are 5a, 6c and 5a. She left primary school with 5c, 5b and 5c. I thought the target grades for two years after would be a bit higher.

Can anyone tell me if this sounds right? Is the gap between 5c and 5a quite a big gap?

Thanks xx
Guest55
Posts: 16254
Joined: Mon Feb 12, 2007 2:21 pm

Re: End of KS3 targets

Post by Guest55 »

Why are they still using NC levels? Most schools have moved on to a new system related either to Year of study or the new GCSE grades.

In two years the old progress measure was at least one level for expected progress. So a level 5b should be at least a level 6b and in a GS I'd expect level 7 by the end of Year 8.
K76
Posts: 42
Joined: Fri Mar 06, 2015 8:41 am

Re: End of KS3 targets

Post by K76 »

They are using levels for Maths, English and Science only. For everything else they are using words which relate to a range of levels.

So if she aims for 6b in English and 6c in Maths and Science then that is good? It's her Science I am most worried about. Her target is 5a and she is on target so the school is happy. I just felt that the target was set low and she could do better. It is not a grammar school but they said the targets were set based on children making good progress.
Guest55
Posts: 16254
Joined: Mon Feb 12, 2007 2:21 pm

Re: End of KS3 targets

Post by Guest55 »

'Good progress' is technically better than expected so I would encourage her to aim for:

English: 6a
Maths: 6b
Science: 6b [science is harder to make progress from level 5 because of the difference between Primary and Secondary]
K76
Posts: 42
Joined: Fri Mar 06, 2015 8:41 am

Re: End of KS3 targets

Post by K76 »

Thank you. She is not on target for those levels but it gives me an idea on what she should be aiming for. I don't want to push too hard but I also think she can do better than what the school are settling for.
loobylou
Posts: 2032
Joined: Thu Nov 27, 2014 5:04 pm

Re: End of KS3 targets

Post by loobylou »

Don't forget as well that although the levels (when they were used) were designed to be linear, in practice they often weren't. Certainly I know of instances where children would arrive at secondary school with a level 4a "label" (for example) but be assessed by the secondary school as 3c or 3b. My dh and his colleagues (secondary school teachers) said that the levels were infuriating as different primary schools labelled children differently and they spent a lot of time telling parents that the levels used in secondary schools could not be correlated precisely with those from primary schools. They said they could tell which primary school a child was from based on how many sublevels they were away from where they assessed them to be. Some schools were reporting children 4 or 5 sublevels higher than the secondary school then assessed them to be...
So it might be worth checking where they assessed your dc to be on entry to year 7 (as they seem to still be using levels) rather than assuming they are using the ones from year 6.
Guest55
Posts: 16254
Joined: Mon Feb 12, 2007 2:21 pm

Re: End of KS3 targets

Post by Guest55 »

loobylou - yes but levels came from National tests and were probably right when the child did the test in May. What I found that some schools then do little maths for the rest of Year 6 so the child's level regresses.

This makes no difference to targets as RAISEonline takes no notice of this 'dip'.
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