I've spent this evening putting data into a spreadsheet to show the progress that the children in my class are making. The problem with doing this though is the pressure that I can feel I am putting on myself - and the reason for it would to any non-educationalist seem bizzare. Take a look at this extract from my targets overview excel sheet;
In the left column you can see the targets that the pupils are expected to reach by July 2009, and looking across you can see the expected sublevels each term - rising towards the final July level. That seems normal, but I am pressurising myself to make the pupils reach the targets now. Why? Because this is what we do in education. If we are set a target for the end of the year, then until that child reaches the target we feel we are failing them. Never mind the fact they are "on track" to hit the target in July, we view it as 'they haven't reached their target yet'. Get them to the target early however, and we feel we haven't set them true targets and "reset" them to a higher level piling even more pressure on ourselves.
There is no other profession that does this. They set a target, and aim to reach it at the end of the cycle. For teachers, (with all the external checks made on us), if that target has not been reached when we are checked during the year we feel we've failed. It's a mindset that we have to get away from, and justify childrens' current achievments by saying "they are on track to reach their target when expected".
