Is Your Year 10 Child's Target Grade Actually Meaningful? How to Read School Progress Data

Your child comes home with a report card listing a target grade of 6 in maths and a 5 in English. Is that ambitious? Realistic? Pulled out of thin air? Most parents nod along at parents' evening without ever being told how those numbers were generated, and that matters — because a target set too low can quietly shape two years of teaching and your child's own expectations.

Here's what those targets actually mean, where they come from, and how to interrogate them properly.

Where Year 10 target grades come from

Target grades in Year 10 are almost never invented by the subject teacher. They're generated from one of a few national data sources, usually before your child has done a single GCSE lesson.

The three you're most likely to encounter are:

• KS2 SATs results — your child's scaled scores in reading and maths at the end of Year 6
• FFT (Fischer Family Trust) estimates — a paid-for analytics service used by most state schools
• MEGs (Minimum Expected Grades) — the school's internal target, usually derived from FFT or similar

There's also CAT4 (Cognitive Abilities Test), which some schools use, particularly in the independent sector. It tests verbal, non-verbal, quantitative and spatial reasoning rather than attainment.

What FFT actually does

FFT takes your child's KS2 results and compares them with the GCSE outcomes of hundreds of thousands of pupils with similar prior attainment. It then produces a probability distribution of likely grades.

Schools usually pick one of three benchmarks:

• FFT 50 — the grade the average child with this prior attainment achieved. Half of similar pupils did better.
• FFT 20 — the grade achieved by pupils in the top 20% of those with similar starting points. More aspirational.
• FFT 5 — the grade achieved by the top 5%. Genuinely stretching.

If the school is setting targets at FFT 50, they're effectively telling your child to be average. That's the issue most parents never hear about.

MEGs and Progress 8

A MEG is whatever the school decides to call its headline target. Some schools set MEGs at FFT 20, some at FFT 50, some use their own formula.

Progress 8 is a separate beast. It's a school-level accountability measure, not a personal target. It compares each pupil's GCSE results across eight subjects with the national average for pupils with the same KS2 starting point. A Progress 8 score of 0 means the school is performing as expected; +0.5 is well above; -0.5 is well below. Your child's "Progress 8 estimate" on a report is essentially a prediction of where they'd need to land for the school to look good in the league tables.

That last point is worth sitting with. Targets serve two masters: your child's progress, and the school's accountability data.

How to spot a target set too low

A few warning signs:

• The target is the same as the predicted grade. Targets should pull a child upward, not describe where they're already heading.
• Every subject has the same target. A child can be a natural in history and a struggler in physics. Identical targets across the board suggest a blanket formula rather than thought.
• The target is well below KS2 performance. If your child was working at the expected standard in Year 6 (a scaled score of 100+), a target of grade 4 in most subjects is questionable.
• The school can't explain where the number came from. "It's from FFT" is not a full answer. Ask which percentile.
• Targets dropped between Year 9 and Year 10. This happens, and rarely for good reasons.

One nuance: KS2 SATs were cancelled in 2020 and 2021. Children who are now in Year 10 or 11 may have teacher-assessed KS2 data, or none at all. Where there's no prior attainment data, schools fall back on internal assessments, which are more variable. If your child sat no formal KS2 tests, ask explicitly what their target is based on.

Questions to ask at parents' evening

You have roughly five minutes per teacher. Make them count. The most useful questions aren't about behaviour or homework — they're about the data underneath the conversation.

• "What is the target grade based on, and which FFT benchmark are you using — 50, 20, or 5?"
• "How does her current working grade compare with her target?"
• "What does she need to do specifically to move from her current grade to the next one up?"
• "Is the target the same as the school's MEG, or have you set something more ambitious for this subject?"
• "If she's already meeting the target, what's the next step?"

That last question matters. A child sitting comfortably on their target for the whole of Year 10 is often a child being under-challenged. Teachers have limited time and will, understandably, prioritise pupils below target. If your child is on track, you may need to be the one pushing for stretch.

What to do if the target looks wrong

If you think a target is too low, don't argue with it in front of your child — that undermines the teacher and confuses the message. Instead:

1. Request a meeting with the head of department or pastoral lead, not just the class teacher.
2. Bring the KS2 data and any recent assessment results.
3. Ask whether the target can be reviewed and reset, and on what evidence.
4. Agree what "stretch" looks like in practice — not just a higher number, but what work it implies.

Most schools will review a target if a parent asks reasonably. The system is more flexible than it appears.

If the gap between current performance and where you believe your child should be is wide, and the school isn't moving, that's often when private tutoring becomes useful — not to chase the school's target, but to build the underlying confidence and depth that lets a child outperform it. A good tutor will set their own working benchmarks based on what your child is actually capable of, independent of the school's accountability framework.

The honest summary

Target grades are not destiny, and they're not personal verdicts. They're statistical estimates filtered through institutional priorities. Treat them as a conversation starter, not a conclusion. The most important number on your child's report is not the target — it's the current working grade, and the question is always the same: what's the next concrete step to move it up?