I’m adding a “pre-script” to this post that supports my rant below – the school at which we work has been recognised for the value added to students progress between key stages 2 and 4. Trinity is in the top 20% nationally (here) so we are not all about just getting that grade C!!!

 **If I knew what the emoticon was for sticking your fingers in your ears, wagging your hands, sticking your tongue out and saying “nahnahnahnahnah” I’d have a whole line of them**

ORIGINAL POST:

I’m going to make this quick, but have to get it off my chest… I’ve just finished marking 2 sets of mock papers and have emails to respond to (I’m busy don’t you know!).

This has been on my mind for a couple of weeks following a conversation with someone, who seems to have a perception that we’re all about getting that golden “C” grade. Ok so it’s our priority but this is driven by necessity and also the performance league tables (lets be honest here!) … but we are so much more than that! We aren’t about just getting C grades from students that should be getting them based on their KS2 results – obviously they are and will continue to be our “first line targets” especially for our “intervention teaching” but every student is in some way a target student.  Let me use very simple language and put it into perspective for you. Last year we got C and D grades from the vast majority of our level 2 students that we taught (yes! level 2), more level 3 students got C’s and B’s than got D’s (their expected 3 level of progress) and all of our level 4 students (apart from 1 “problem” student and several PRU attenders) got C’s and above, with a large proportion of them getting B’s and several getting A’s.

Some of you will think that it must feel like an “exam factory” and oh how I hate that phrase! Well if it means that we drive our students to want more than they are being told they are “expected to get” according to some algorithm, then yes we are  – I make no excuses, and whilst we operate in a system that “values” exam grades we will continue to drive them hard.  If it means we get them practicing key topics in the run up to their exam so what? Whatever!?!? To get students coming to see me hours after their mock to see what their results were is a world away from where we were 4 years ago, when students didn’t give a “toss” and you may have a different value system (we probably would all want to change or tweak what we have, but we don’t live in an ideal world … some of my students certainly don’t!) you are entitled to your opinion, as am I. 

The reason for the post is that I am faced with the reality of  two sets of amazing mock results  that are just so at odds with someone’s perception of what we are all about … let’s just say that I am looking forward to sharing the results … obviously I’ll be playing it down with them as I don’t want to take the pressure off just yet! I’ll let them relax in June when the exams are all done and dusted.

RANT OVER. Good night!