Target Setting Days: A New Venture

As parents you will be aware that we have introduced ‘target setting days’ into our annual programme of events to support our students in achieving their best during their time in the school. This has meant giving up two days of teaching each year, but we feel that the benefits far outweigh the loss of time.

The aims of these days are:

• For students to set some clear targets so that their work can improve
• To provide some quality time for parents and students to discuss their progress and any other important matters with tutors
• To provide additional meetings with other relevant members of staff
• To discuss appointments with subject teachers for parents’ evening

After our first target setting day in November we are really pleased with the responses that we have all received from parents, students and staff. Although some parents had to wait quite a while to see tutors and although staff had a very long and exhausting day, the whole event was very worthwhile and very well received.  We are reviewing the organisation of the day so that we can make the second target setting day in March even better for all concerned. What pleased us most is that well over 95% of students attended on the day, the vast majority with their parents.

Mike Gee

In school Frances Cox, one of our Assistant Principals and Dave Claxton, our Assessment Co-ordinator work behind the scenes to provide a wealth of information that enables us to see how well students are doing and how well they could do in relation to their ability. With this in mind they both worked hard in the organisation of the target setting day.  Mrs Cox saw a number of our gifted and talented students with their parents and pointed out what these students need to do to maintain their hard work or fulfil their potential. Dave Claxton produced a wealth of data that tutors used in their meetings to help set targets and discuss students’ progress and potential to do well. Below each of them explains a little about their work:

As the co-ordinator for gifted and talented students in the school, I used our target setting day to see some of the students from years 7 to 11 who are on our gifted and talented register. Their teachers monitor their progress and this information is passed on to me.  Using this together with their Interim Progress Report (IPR), I was able to talk to the students and their parents about a number of issues

The issues discussed included:

• Progress and achievement
• Homework
• Membership of the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Students and the ways in which students are using their membership
• Future plans -  choice of ‘A’ levels or option choices in year 10
• Issues raised by students and parents

Frances Cox

During the meetings with students and parents tutors use school data for each individual student to assess whether they are making the expected amount of progress or have made better or worse than expected progress.

Information about students’ ability from benchmark tests in year 7 and past achievement in national curriculum tests are linked to project where students should be at any point in Key Stage 3.

Ability tests taken by students in year 10 along with the results of their Key Stage 3 national tests are used to project expected grades at GCSE level.

Members of the College in years 12 and 13 are given challenging but realistic targets based on their GCSE grades and results of half termly tests taken in all their subjects.

Dave Claxton