Academic Reports

This information is supplementary to the information which you will receive along with your child’s report.

All of our reports contain two sorts of information.

Attitudinal information:  We report on Effort, Behaviour and Homework as three key areas which reflect the child’s attitude to learning.  Teachers will arrive at these grades using their record keeping and professional judgement.

Progress information:  We report on whether your child is making good progress versus their starting points.  The starting point for most students is taken as the scores on entry to the academy.  For many year groups, this is Key Stage 2 SATs.  For year groups where testing was not conducted nationally, we conducted CATs testing.  For students in our sixth form, it is the GCSE results.

All of our attitudinal grades are reported using the KSA Purple, Green, Amber, Red scale where purple is excellent, green is good, amber means that some improvement is necessary and red raises a concern.

Progress in Key Stage 3 (years seven, eight and nine)

As students study our curriculum they acquire new knowledge and skills.  This is what we term ‘progress’.  Students who are able to remember more and do more compared to both their peers and starting points are making better progress.  We give our students assessments in class before each reporting point and use these to evaluate student progress before reporting to you.  These assessments will generally assess a range of topics, both recent and from longer ago, in order to evaluate the overall level of knowledge and skills of a student in a subject.

All of our Key Stage 3 Progress grades are reported using the KSA Purple, Green, Amber, Red scale where purple is excellent, green is good, amber means that some improvement is necessary and red raises a concern.

An example would be a student who is amber for maths.  This means that this student has not done as well in the assessment as we would expect her to.  Other students who had lower starting points have done better than she did.

We do not set target grades (‘MEGS’) for students in key stage 3.

Information for parents: Our reports at KS4 and KS5

Progress in Key Stage 4 and 5 (year ten upwards)

Your students report shows their 'Working At' and 'Predicted' grades.  'Working At' grades are taken from assessments in school (such as tests or mock exams) and describe the grade that teachers expect that students would get if they were to sit the exams immediately.  As such, 'Working At' grades are a useful indicator of students current knowledge and skills.  'Predicted' grades use the teacher's professional opinion, based on all of the evidence and usual patterns of progress, to give a likely grade for the student at the end of the course assuming that they continue to work at home and in school as they currently are. 

The report also shows a MEG (Minimum Expected Grade).  These grades are created by the academy to give an indication of what a good outcome might be for the student concerned, based upon both the students own starting points and national patterns of progress.  As such, the MEGs are bespoke to each student.

The Progress rating tells you whether your child is on track to achieve their Minimum Expected Grade (MEG).

• Red – Concern.  Currently not expected to achieve the Minimum Expected Grade
• Amber – currently not on track to achieve the Minimum Expected Grade
• Green – currently on track to meet the Minimum Expected Grade.
• Purple – currently on track to exceed the Minimum Expected Grade.