bobsmith Posted June 11, 2015 Author Posted June 11, 2015 All depends if you want a serious answer or not ignoring the sound bites - the answer comes from looking at national transition matrices for each subject. To be safe from the dreaded ofsted and anyone else who wants to chuck their tuppence in, you want to be on or above the national average. If you manage that you'll generate a positive VA and everyone will be happy if you've got your RAISEonline credentials handy you can download a spreadsheet from here: https://www.raiseonline.org/OpenDocument.aspx?document=281
LosOjos Posted June 11, 2015 Posted June 11, 2015 "To be safe from the dreaded ofsted and anyone else who wants to chuck their tuppence in, you want to be on or above the national average." There's the rub - by definition, ~50% of schools are constantly failing. This particular sound bite was based on class targets and what % the teacher should aim for to be making expected progress - 100%, of course!
MattMitchell Posted June 11, 2015 Posted June 11, 2015 24% of students who came in on a 3c made "expected progress" in Maths. 97% of students who came in on a 5a did. Expected progress is, although better than threshold measures like A*-C, still a very crude tool. Progress8 is much better, although subject-specific value-added is a bit of a missing item at the moment.
LosOjos Posted June 11, 2015 Posted June 11, 2015 Progress8 has become pretty fundamentally flawed too though - the difference in boundaries between the bottom (half a grade) and top (1.5 grades) means that a child going from a B -> A* appears to be making the same progress as a child going from a G -> D - not exactly a level playing field! I should point out here that the original quote is a little out of context; it wasn't in relation to national expectations but foe that class's targets, obviously teachers should be aiming for 100% of their students to be on target. I know that rarely happens, but it should be the aim
bobsmith Posted July 8, 2015 Author Posted July 8, 2015 I've been trying to educate my staff that targets for students (I use FFT Aspire and set targets per subject based on the next boundary up from their current position) are aspirational. I don't expect 100% of students to hit their targets, I do expect the significant % to do so. When FFT says that 50% of level 5a's get an A* in English they obviously don't tell us which 50% of students that is, mostly because it's statistics and not a crystal ball. The important bit is that staff realise that an A* target is reasonable for this group of students and that is what they should be striving for. Student targets used as a stick to beat teachers over the head with is counter productive as staff will end up rejecting their validity.
LosOjos Posted July 8, 2015 Posted July 8, 2015 @bobsmith - totally agree with your sentiment, but at the same time how can you say that anything other than 100% of students are expected to make expected progress? That's not to say that they will do and it's important that leadership teams understand this, but of course we should aim for every student to achieve expected progress - it is what is expected... It's also worth pointing out that expected progress and aspirational targets are not the same thing (at least they're not here)
tombry Posted July 8, 2015 Posted July 8, 2015 that was a conversation I had to have, if we gave all our students expected progress targets, we would fail as a school. Most of our students have BEP targets, with only some, in specific classes, having EP targets. Still not sure it's the way to go, but I'm not in charge of those decisions!
cct72 Posted July 8, 2015 Posted July 8, 2015 If a target has been created using a spreadsheet, by definition, it is NOT a target. A target requires human involvement, else it is an estimate.
bobsmith Posted July 9, 2015 Author Posted July 9, 2015 If only the expected progress as defined by the DfE had any grounding in reality! It's not that I want to see the level 3s achieving less than 3 LoP (they mostly don't achieve 3LoP), but the level 5s and 6s need to make 4 or 5 to make progress in line with national figures! @cct72, I agree, however if you use FFT Aspire you get a series of estimates, you can ask the software to offer a target, which can be moderated by a human. If the human agrees with the suggestion and makes no change to it then it still becomes a target. I've been blocked at this point in time from getting teachers to moderate the targets - but it is the final step that will allow the teaching staff to "buy in" to aspirational targeting.
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