In 2014 the Government removed Key Stage 3 attainment levels and left no national replacement, leaving schools to create their own methods of tracking progress.
This means, unlike Primary Schools, there are no “national” attainment levels in Years 7 & 8.
Instead, at KS3 (Year 7 & 8) we base our progress/attainment levels on a series of bespoke “Bohunt Standards”. These “Standards” are common levels of attainment agreed and mapped out across the 9 Secondary schools in the Bohunt Education Trust and compare the progress of the students in their Cross-Trust Assessments, Classwork and Homework to where we would expect them to be, based on their KS2 data (or CATS scores in the case of this year group).
From these "levels" we are able to give a progress indicator (shown below) that reflects their progress over the year and when used with the Attitude to Learning Scores in reports, it gives us (and you) a good indication of their progress in Year 8 and if there are any concerns about progress into Year 9.
This also allows for some informed discussion regarding the suitability of option choices, alongside the Options process.
We don’t tend to send out the progress indicators until the Spring Term, as we tend to focus on attitude to learning in the Autumn term.