... to hate SATS?

@Iamnotthe1 thanks for that really clear breakdown. Depressing how it can affect future prospects at school.

Our primary are quite relaxed about it - in fact a teacher in the secondary that Dd2 will be going to said our primary was the only one where the children's SATs results matched their abilities.

But the secondary has said they do an extra language for the top two literacy sets instead of extra literacy so have been telling Dd2, she needs to do well to get into that. She reads all the time and would definitely not need extra literacy support. I guess schools need to judge somehow but it feels frustrating that future subjects depend on one exam in Y6.

My yr6 son missed lessons this morning because he was awake until 1am last night with 'tummy ache'. He's autistic, hates change and is incredibly academic so is finding all the SATs revision papers very boring.
He gets tummy ache when he's anxious, and he was told he was 2 marks from greater depth in SPAG in the 'mocks' so he needs to work harder (not said in those words but that's what it meant).
They asked him to do extra prep classes at lunchtimes but I refused to agree - he has sensory needs and needs his exercise.
If they put less pressure on he would achieve a lot more but as it is, he's an anxious exhausted kid and he doesn't believe me that SATs don't matter in the scheme of life.

But that's okay. If a score of less than 100 is the right score for where she is currently working then it's the right score to be transitioning with. It doesn't mean she has failed.

It's also worth remembering that the Y7 Maths curriculum (and in some schools some of the Y8 curriculum) is largely a repeat of topics they have already studied. This is highly effective for children like yours who have bigger gaps in their knowledge that need to be filled. It's not great for the higher attainers but some schools manage to address that well too.

I can see how all that information could cause worry in parents but my approach is always that you can prepare for and act on the things you know.

For your child, the important thing to break is the idea that <100 is a fail. It isn't: it's just a lower score. Some will be higher, some will be lower. If she has done her best and hit her current potential then whatever score she gets is the right one and she's starting secondary with a realistic picture of where she currently is. That's always helpful.

This is really interesting thank you.

We're still working to undo the damage that a stressed teacher did last year through year 6 SATs. She wanged on and on about how much they mattered and how hard the children needed to work. My DD would have got greater depth at the start of the year, so there was no need to put any pressure on her. But the teacher harangued the whole class and DD took all of the messages on board, no matter how much we told her that the teacher was really talking to the other children. Now every test in year 7 is met with excessive revision and a genuine belief that they matter and it is beginning to impinge on our lives. So I'm not a fan of SATs or that teacher.

I agree with all of this. This is the reality of sats results in school especially the part about access to courses like triple science and being locked into higher or foundation groups.

any school that says they do their own testing in year 7 are saying this to reassure/placate parents

I’m in the same boat with my little boy & he misses so much school (cystic fibrosis) & recently had another OP, so I know he’s behind. I’ve tried myself to get him caught up. He is saying if he does bad he’s failed. I had to sit him down tonight & explain it doesn’t matter at all as long as he’s done his best then that’s what’s important.

Feel so sorry for the kids. Missed how much with Covid as well, SATS can be really stressful for children & not everyone is good at exams. I hate that we’re all judged by an exam when there’s so many other ways to express your intelligence. Good luck to your child though I’m sure she will do well no matter what x

@Iamnotthe1 very interesting. Thanks for your response.

@Isitthathardtobekind
This is interesting then as secondaries here say they don’t take note of them and they do their own tests early Y7. They also say they use their own tests to set.

It could be that individual teachers don't know how the data is used. This would be a common thing as the only people actively involved in decision-making around data are senior leaders that specifically work with data.

However, the more cynically side of me would say that it's in the interests of the secondary school for children to perform lower than their potential on their KS2 exams.

Sorry I haven't read the entire thread but yes!! I hate SATs too! My 10 year old is stressed and I'm so annoyed that he's even thinking about exam performance when it's not going to affect him in later life and he should be enjoying learning, not worrying about it.

I've told him to try his best and that is more than good enough.

I've posted this before but just to correct some of the misinformation on this thread:

KS2 assessments and grades.
All children receive a scaled score in each of the following:
Reading (assessed by one exam),
Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling (assessed by two exams),
Maths (assessed by three exams), and
Writing (assessed based on the standard of independent writing produced within class and evidenced across 6 pieces).

The scaled score is between 80 and 120.
80 - 99 means a child is "Working Towards the expected standard for the end of KS2".
100 - 109 means a child is "Working at the expected standard for the end of KS2".
110+ means a child is "Working at Greater Depth withing the expected standard for the end of KS2".
This is how they are reported but it's the actual scaled score itself that matters. None of these are a fail: they are just lower scores. But some interpret a score of 99 or lower as failing. This isn't entirely correct nor overly helpful.

How scaled scores are used.
A child's scaled scores are used to identify their target grades for GCSE. These are not targets set by the school and cannot be changed by the school (although schools are welcome to set their own internal ones, they don't actually mean anything). These are not superseeded by CAT results or any other testing that secondaries might do.

Secondary schools are judged by how well they get children joining in Y7 to hit those targets in Y11. This is known as "Progress 8".

Why does that matter for the child?
There are a number of decisions made at a senior level in secondary schools that will be affected by the target grades of children. Parents are incredibly unlikely to be aware of any of these decisions nor how targets have influenced them. In fact, most class teachers will also be unaware as these are often decisions made by those in departmental leadership or SLT and, even then, only by people who are actively involved in the use or analysis of data.

What kind of decisions?
It varies from school to school but, personally, I have seen:

1. Results/targets having an impact on which form group your child ends up in,

2. Results/targets having an impact on which set your child ends up in, including some children being "locked" in a set that they shouldn't be in simply because they have to get a certain result and that's the lowest set still teaching the higher content. This also then means there are less spaces for children to move up from lower sets into sets teaching higher content.

3. Results/targets dictating which band you are in with only certain bands being taught higher exam content and being allowed to sit certain courses like triple science.

4. The targets for children being used to identify those who are on target by themselves and those who aren't, even if they are performing at the same level. This leads to resources being used to support/boast the children who are off-track rather than doing the same for children who could do better but are already achieving their target. This can even go as far as:

5. The deployment of staff being informed by which children are "off-track" and those children having access to the stronger teachers.

I'm not saying that this is how it should be. In an ideal world, every child would progress at their own rate and reach their individual potential. However, this is how it's currently working in practice.

This is interesting then as secondaries here say they don’t take note of them and they do their own tests early Y7. They also say they use their own tests to set.

I’ve known children who got greater depth in some subjects at SATs but they were put in the bottom sets/into intervention groups at secondary for the same subjects.

There is an expectation that children who were assessed as 'Working At Expected Level' at the KS1 SATs will be on track to reach 'Working At Expected Level' at the KS2 SATs, although with all the Covid disruption there's bound to be some hiccups there. Heads and school staff can feel pressured though, it's not unheard of for staff to lose jobs over bad results so pressure is on to ensure children close gaps in knowledge so they can perform to the best of their ability.

If DD has missed a lot of school that can cause issues with her learning as she may have missed some parts of the curriculum and then not be able to build securely on that learning if she has gaps. Schools were given a budget after Covid to help kids keep up with learning if there were gaps so hopefully DD was given some extra support/tuition in school.

I would speak to the school and explain how she is feeling. This shouldn’t be happening at Y6.

My daughter’s school ramped it up last year when she was in Y6. Lots of revision, revision guides sent home, parents meetings with terrible secondary exam like advice. my daughter seemed stressed and upset. I complained. I felt strongly that it was the head who had been there a couple of years trying to show that the school was now great because they get good SATs results. Sure enough, it was plastered all over that they were the best results the school had got in years.

Saying this though, my daughter is now Y7 and was telling my other child this week that she loved SATs week. She also told me after SAts that she wasn’t worried about them at all and that she was struggling due to a completely different reason. I think I assumed it was the SATs because I was annoyed at the school and so it was easier for her to go along with this rather than to explain what was actually wrong.

At my own secondary school sats scores are used to inform targets and sets for year 7. I don’t think this is unusual.

progress 8 is the biggest measure for secondary school performance and this is based on progress since SATS so it is a little naive to think it doesn’t matter. schools work hard to ensure progress happens for all students at all levels - which is a good thing - but underachieving at KS2 could impact on your child’s groups/sets through school and on how much they are pushed.

im not saying I agree or advocate for any of this - but it’s the reality. As is the fact that the most progress at GCSE happens for those students with high KS2 scores.

Sadly KS2 scores are deliberately confusing for parents who don’t understand what they mean.

I will add that I don’t agree with creating lots of anxiety for year 6 students and think this does add negatively to the mental health issues many young people face

yet another reason why the uk school system is crazy

Our junior school didn't. They did offer supplementary classes for the Year 6 kids but the pressure wasn't there. I read so much about kids in tears and hoped our school wouldn't be heaping pressure on the pupils, was pleased that they didn't.

If you haven't already, stress to your DD that the reason for Year 6 SATs is to compare them to the Year 2 SATs results to see what progress has been made since. It's a test for the school rather than the children, because they need to see that there isn't a problem with the way the lessons are being taught.

The secondary schools they move on to might use the SATs result to predict how well the children will do at GCSE, but they will also do their own tests to see where each child is, and the Year 6 SATs scores will be used to measure how much progress the children made at secondary. There is no need for her to worry about it.