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How you can be above or well below the National Standards - on the same piece of work.

Here is how a parent who has seen their child's school report can be sure that their child meets the National Standards, if that report claims to do so.

In a mapping exercise, a team of 14 experienced teachers independently worked through a set of tests and aligned them with National Standards. They looked at various pieces of work and assessed then against the National Standards. Slight problem - not all got the same assessment.

Here's the graph for Year 8.

The dotted line at 1650 points, shows the judgement made by these experts for a set of scripts that all scored 1650 points. The graph shows that a script with a total score of 1650 can be judged at and below the standard, but also judged well below and above the standard, depending on who assesses it. You can get all these judgements against the National Standards on the same test score.

If a child's work is to be assessed by one school as well below the standard, and above the standard at another, surely that raises questions of reliability if the standards are not clear enough for teachers to consistently use the assessment tools to accurately measure student performance against these standards.