Heads of maths - what are the key indicators that you're looking for over whether your tiering strategy has succeeded/failed? I have my ideas but interested to know what others are looking at. #mathschat
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Any 4s at Higher I think should be looked at carefully at an individual child level. Lots suggests a systemic issue. Odd surprise underperformance happens, no big deal. I always reviewed thoroughly those where there had been discussion about entry.
Foundation is a different matter I think. An expected 5 you had surely thought about before and there was a rationale for foundation entry. Perhaps some analysis about surprise 5s, could you reasonably have seen it coming?
The comparison that was often most interesting to me was those two (or more) children who you thought were similar but the final tiering decision went different ways.
A number of times I saw 5 on foundation and 4 on higher from such children, pushing me towards foundation entry preference for these children over the first few years of this spec
yes. I think it's generally recognised that getting a grade 5 on less than 30% on a higher paper is less healthy for a students perception of maths than getting 70-80% on a foundation paper.
I wonder what % of grade 4s and % of grade 5s come from foundation vs higher nationally
Interesting! I think a 4 (or U/3) on Higher probably means they should have done Foundation. So that’s what we want to eliminate. But I’m not sure we can say that someone achieving a really high Foundation mark (which doesn’t test much algebra) would have got a 6+ on Higher.
I agree, some of my class were moved to foundation and got high scores but I know they would have done worse at higher. Certain topics eg trig are assessed very differently so a student confident on a foundation qu wouldn't be able to do a higher qu when it's mixed with other topics
I think it's good to look at the QLAs and see whether the higher students are only really gaining marks in the cross over questions. If so then foundation may have been better. Not necessarily better grade but a better experience
I'll be looking at progress since mocks. I might also get the papers/qla and look to see where the marks came from for the 4/5 students. Did they get the crossover marks mostly or not.
Good to keep in mind that grade 5 students who could tackle the Higher paper are often better doing Foundation for the sake of their mental health/impact on other subjects. Feels like the anxiety of never "completing" the Higher revision shouldn't be underestimated in that choice.
I'd be interested in whether those in the assumed foundation classes throughout Y10/11 perform compared to those that were decided to do foundation part way through Y11.
I also try and look at which Qs Ss got right and wrong compared to other classes and compared to the grade cohort nationally.
There will always be misjudgments at the individual level. I'm interested in whether those could be avoided with a different assessment strategy in Y9/10/11.
whilst I agree with this, how do you know you're not getting noise at the top of foundation? it's easy to spot a putting in for higher error, but less easy to spot a putting in for foundation error.
maybe you look at proportions at each grade compared to proportions nationally
Yes it is tough. Any foundation fives that are comfortably fives and perform better on the crossover content than national foundation fives probably could have done higher. Cross check that against when the decision was made.
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I wonder what % of grade 4s and % of grade 5s come from foundation vs higher nationally
I also try and look at which Qs Ss got right and wrong compared to other classes and compared to the grade cohort nationally.
maybe you look at proportions at each grade compared to proportions nationally