In the US, it is the same. I had no idea how my son was doing other than his teacher was lying to me. At the beginning of the year, it is impossible to do better than the middle. Not sure if the reasoning was so the children can show improvement? I knew he was doing better than the middle but how well he was doing was a mystery.
Unfortunately you may be seeing the side effects of the recent rush to quantify teacher performance- in most states a teacher now must show a year's improvement for all of their students, no matter how high or low they are when they start the year. And since children tend to develop in fits and starts instead of a nice linear progression, you can imagine that the system may tend to be gamed.
