Nearly the end of term

Well, this is it. Just a week to go until the end of the summer term, aka term 6, aka ... the whole of the Reception year. Wow. It's gone extremely quickly. We seem to be breaking up relatively early - I know this because I've been looking up lots of other local authorities' term times to see if we could sneak in a theme park trip while it might not be too busy. We're risking it, and going to Legoland on the 20th - only one of the relatively local LAs is breaking up on the 17th like us. One of the others is continuing until the 31st! I didn't realise there would be so much difference.

We've had quite a few things going on in the last couple of weeks. Summer fayre, for one. I did volunteer to man a stand, but no one ever got back to me, so instead I got to wander around unencumbered. Well, apart from by the Husband and Daughter, obviously. It was a nice event, and no doubt very profitable. Daughter had to have the speed turned down on her go-kart as she was threatening to run someone over, and a very small child named Percy had a rather interesting crash.

Then there was the informal open evening, which consisted entirely of wandering around the school in a fairly aimless manner. We had a chat to Daughter's current teacher, and to her new one for September. After that, I had twenty minutes at home before heading back to school for the staff and governors' social. This entailed me being determined not to talk exclusively to the other governors, but to mingle with the staff, which I did under the influence of increasing amounts of white wine, and not nearly enough food. I left my jacket behind and didn't notice for 36 hours, and did feel a little fragile the following day, but I don't think I otherwise disgraced myself. Probably.

Before that though, we'd had a bit of a milestone. Daughter's first school report. The covering letter included an explanation of the EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage) achievement letters, so I turned to the next page to see what Daughter had 'scored', and promptly lost the covering letter, missing that it announced who Daughter's new teacher would be. And the time of the open evening. Oops. As well as the numbers, it included some good comments. A friend who's a Reception teacher was surprised that we got the numbers, but the ubiquitous Mumsnet tells me it's not quite as uncommon as she thinks. It does mean, as a parent, you get a bit obsessed with the numbers, and what they mean, and whether your child is average, above or below ... but I'm pretty glad to have them. I was impressed by the comments - a friend's daughter, at a different school, had a report which didn't include the numbers, but you could work them out as the text was copied and pasted straight from the EYFS handbook.

What have I learned about EYFS from this? What is official (ish) is that levels 1-3 are 'working towards early learning goals', 4-8 'working within early learning goals' and level 9 'working at or beyond early learning goals'. Children achieving 4-8 in the 13 areas assessed are doing roughly what that age of child should be doing - although they might be under-achieving compared to what they're actually capable of, of course. Level 9 is supposed to flag up to Year 1 teachers the areas in which a child might be particularly able. Less officially, it seems like an score of 6 to 7 averaged across the categories is about average. I did find one comment where someone claimed that Autumn-born children were expected to score 105, but seeing as that adds up to 12 level 8s and a 9, that seems unlikely.

Anyway, Daughter did pretty well, although not as well as a friend (at another school) who did so well it's frightened the life out of her mother! Her targets for improvement are:

- To continue to use simple punctuation with some consistency.
- To confidently put forward her ideas when working as part of a group, without the encouragement of an adult.

She'll be doing better than me if she can achieve the second one any time before she turns 35.