10 October 2018
It has been great to see so many parents and carers of Year 7 students today at our settling-in evening. This is an event to discuss how our new Year 7 have settled into life at Walton-le-Dale. A couple of things have come up this evening which I thought would be worth clarifying....
Reports
Parents and carers will receive the "WLD Profile" by the 23rd November which gives all the information that we know about each individual Year 7 - information from primary school, our initial assessments etc... and acts as the baseline for our assessment of their progress throughout school. This is followed a month later (20th December) with the first interim report into their academic progress.
A further report follows on the 29th March and the parents' evening takes place on the 12th June to discuss progress before they move into Year 8. Parents and carers are welcome to contact us at school if you need an update on your child's progress as the year progresses and we are always happy to discuss any issues or concerns.
Setting
A few parents & carers have raised "setting" this evening so it may be worth clarifying how setting and grouping works in Year 7. We only set in Maths, English, Science and French - all other groups are mixed ability. For those 4 subjects the year group is split into 2 halves and each half is divided into 3 sets. This means that we have 2 set 1s, 2 set 2s and 2 set 3s - in other words the setting is very "broad". We believe that this broad setting helps teachers by grouping students of broadly similar abilities together, but does not accidentally restrict their potential. As they move into Year 8, when we know our students much better, there are 6 sets (1 to 6) across the year in the same 3 subjects. We do not generally make a huge fuss about telling students which set they are in as we want every student to be aware that they can achieve the highest possible grades, and their full potential, whatever set they are in.
I hope that this clarifies these things - should you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us.
Regards
James Harris
Headteacher
Posted by James Harris
Category: WLD Updates
