Private primary going to state secondary, should we bother with SATS?

[Threeschools]

How important is it to do SATS? DD's private primary school don't do them, will she be penalised in terms of settings when/if moving to state secondary? Should I find out if she can sit them somewhere else? 2 sets of parents got very annoyed because their DCs were put in middle sets when apparently they belonged to the top sets, and they had to "fight" with the school to get this rectified. Are these settings set in stone so to speak?

[senua]

If the State school is good then things won't be set in stone, the DC will be able to move up/down sets according to the ability they demonstrate (important bit this: the teachers won't put Jocasta in top set on the parents say-so, Jocasta needs to do her bit to give the teacher evidence to support the assessment). And if the school is good they won't be setting (grading the child as one, across all subjects), they will be streaming (grading differently for different subjects, so she could be top in Maths but bottom in English).
After all the fuss of SATs in Year 6, the Secondaries supersede the test with their own version early in Year 7 (called CATs) so they can use that for setting.

[fourcorneredcircle]

senua is right apart from the setting/streaming (other way round!)

[Undersmile]

Secondaries test everyone when they arrive anyway. The difference between their ks2 results and their actual knowledge and competencies is an eye-opener.

[senua]

Ooops, well spotted fourcornered. Mea culpa. That will teach me to post too early of a weekend morning.

For the avoidance of doubt
setting, good; streaming, bad

[Threeschools]

Interesting, if DCs don't "pass" SATS, what happens? Does that mean that private schools will have to do them?

[FranHastings]

I overheard a secondary teacher saying that the SATs were absolute nonsense and they did their own assessments. I would not bother with them, they were absolutely pointless and completely wasted a year of my child's education. (I say that even though they did very well).

[FranHastings]

^obviously, I don't think that teacher represents all teachers everywhere.

[AnotherNewt]

"Interesting, if DCs don't "pass" SATS, what happens? Does that mean that private schools will have to do them?"

No. Private schools will offer what they think is right. What a state secondary would do with a pupil who has never taken SATS (as opposed to one who had taken then but not reached the required level) probably isn't going to be a major consideration.

[Brokenbiscuit]

DD just started at state secondary this year. They were set for all subjects after the first four weeks, on the basis of baseline assessments, work in class and homework. Not SATS, but I think that was partly because of the new SATS this year and not being quite sure of how to interpret them.

We've been told that they will be assessed every half term and that they will move sets if they're not in the right place. I gather from parents with kids in older years that there is quite a lot of movement.

No idea how it will work for privately educated kids when the children who don't "pass" have to retake SATS in year 7. With any luck, the government will abandon that stupid idea in any case!

[senua]

Despite lack of SATs, does the Primary have any other objective information that they can pass on eg NFER scores.

[Threeschools]

They have school reports with the results of their own end of year assessments and they do CATS just before half term in the autumn term. But apparently this was ignored by the state secondary. To be honest I am not tempted to go the SATS route, as I don't want to embark on extra tuition and my understanding of the previous posts is that it might be worse if she ends up not passing them as opposed to not have done them IFSWIM.

[CauliflowerSqueeze]

SATS are helpful, yes.

Re: setting/ streaming.
Setting can be useful but not in every subject. English often like to have a wider range otherwise those with less ability are never able to be exposed to the ideas and discussions that higher level students will have.

Also, banding or "pathways" are used in a lot of schools and never really mentioned. There may be 3 "pathways" in a school which are for higher, middle and low ability. The reason for this is not to separate them out by ability but to have a different curriculum offer. Those in the "bottom" band will normally do more hours of the core subjects and often in smaller groups. Those in the highest one might do two foreign languages for example. The difficulty with that comes where a child is poor at English but excellent at maths, for example.

Having two "populations" of a year group is another option. Half have English for example while the other half have Maths.

Having the whole year group on one subject at the same time is very expensive.

[TheColonelAdoresPuffins]

2 sets of parents got very annoyed because their DCs were put in middle sets when apparently they belonged to the top sets

Presumably they were put in middle sets because they achieved an average result in the tests the school carried out compared to other pupils.

[Threeschools]

In that case 2stripedsocks the private primaries will have to make their pupils take them I assume. So I will try stop fretting about this and trust the schools.

[Undersmile]

There aren't any plans yet, because DfE have not given any information on how it will happen.
If children go from independent primary to state secondary, it will be the secondary school's problem, not the independent, as the children will be their pupils. I cannot see any independent schools giving a stuff what happens after children have left them, and are attending different schools.

[Balletgirlmum]

Private primaries will assume that most of their children will be continuing into private secondaries so will continue to not do sats in the same way as lots are still doing old style A-G GCSE's.

[PettsWoodParadise]

DD did just this, moved from Independent where they don't do SATS (we also home educated for last term of Y6 when even if she was at a state school she would have missed the SATs). She started Y7 at the local grammar and not having done SATs really hasn't made one jot of a difference as they do all their own assessments. They also teach in form for Y7 and only start setting further up the school. I've been told by some on this site all sorts of doom and gloom if DD didn't sit them but it hasn't come to pass.

[midcenturymodern]

Our secondary set by CATs which they do in the first week. There seems to be a fair amount of movement into different teaching groups through the year too.

I have a Y6 child in state primary. We've had a SATs meeting recently and they said they have no idea what the gov is going to do to make the secondary schools do SATs resits. My child will likely fail the SATs and fail the resit so I'm very concerned. School also said they would boycott if the majority of schools decided to (they said something about not knowing until May when the unions have conference) but they don't know what that will mean for resisting in secondary.

[GU24Mum]

Not all independent schools do SATs and the secondaries can't insist on them. I certainly wouldn't try and sit them out of school. As the others have said, the secondaries will invariably test the children on arrival and quite a lot after that too. There will always be children in the wrong sets at first (and parents who think their children are in the wrong sets.....) but I don't think sitting SATs out of school will change this.

[LetitiaCropleysCookbook]

All kids are required to have passed a certain level in Sats by the end of year 6 or they will be retaking in year 7.

Have the goalposts changed, then? I was always given to understand that SATs were an indicator of how well the school was performing, rather than an exam that children passed or failed.

[NicknameUsed]

At DD's school they used the SATS results to track progress and for GCSE predictions. I expect this will have changed now as she is 16.