To feel these parent are not understanding ( WhatsApp and Sats )

Sorry - that one was for DiminishedSevenths.

Then I’m really sorry for jumping to conclusions and being snappy. I’m also feeling a bit sensitive, sorry - I know that feeling you describe very well, and God, it’s bloody hard, isn’t it? I hope you’re ok. Sending him (and you) lots of luck.

@DiminishedSevenths Yes Eng Lang does seem to be an outlier as time management seems to be something essential for all. The amount of text to be read and assimilated is gigantic before you even get on to the writing.

No problem. I am just very sensitive at the moment as it is so hard to see my lovely boy work so hard with potentially no reward at the end of it. I really really really hope he doesn’t have to do English Language again next year.

I tend to agree that most of the exams are ok for time, but English Language seems hugely difficult in the time allowed. I think most children would perform better with longer for that exam as they’d have time to properly plan the writing part. If we want to assess their comprehension and writing ability, why not give them all a bit longer.

As an employer, if 'speed of thinking' is particularly important then test it on interviews. But many jobs are not done on instantaneous technical responses. People have time to take a considered view.

Individuals do of course also have responsibility not to take jobs where the main role of the job they are unsuited to.

As I said, I’m clearly the one in our house lacking innate intelligence! 😳

Then my apologies - I’d only seen your last post and read it in isolation. My mistake for misunderstanding the context!

Just ignore them, at the end of the day it doesn’t matter if they understand or agree with why some children have different arrangements, they do and that’s all that matters.

I disagree. (I'm going to talk about GCSEs here as they matter more than y6 SATs.)

Exams in England are meant to test subject knowledge and understanding, not 'speed of thinking'.
The time limit is, in most subjects (Eng Lang may be an exception), perfectly sufficient for most students to answer the whole paper. Having the time limit stops students writing too much unnecessarily, and helps for general admin purposes.
Giving slower writers or slower thinkers extra time enables them to show what they can do.
For most students giving them extra time isn't going to give them noticable extra marks, whereas for those who need it, it can make a considerable difference.

If you want a 'speed of thinking' exam then have one. But don't turn every single GCSE into a 'speed of thinking exam'.

Furthermore given that GCSE Maths and English Language are gateway qualifications, it makes it even more important that those that need access arrangements can have them. Otherwise you are setting them to fail before they even begin.

To be honest I’m not quite sure I follow you. My son has low to middling intelligence but not SEN and I agree that the two are not linked. I was just upset at a previous poster suggesting that his life was easier because he does not have SEN. He has no extra time in exams (and I don’t think he should). I suppose it’s a question of whether GCSEs etc should measure overall performance or innate intelligence, but I don’t know the answer to that.

As an employer looking at Gcse or A level grades, I would want to know which candidates got A particular grade within the time, and which took took an extra 25% time to get there. I don't object where a kid has a physical injury which slows down there writing,.... but slow processing time??? No thank you!

I think this is my problem with it. GCSEs assess multiple aspects including understanding, recall, and speed of thinking. If we are giving some students extra time for slow thinking then we are saying that speed of thinking isn’t a part of what is being tested. In which case, why have a time limit at all. Just let the students complete the exam in their own time and leave when done.

DininishedSevenths (love the username!), by “not being very academic”, I’m guessing that you perhaps mean “not very intelligent”? (As opposed to reflecting the normal span of intelligence but for whatever reason (eg, having no use of one’s arms, being unable to see/read/hear the questions) being unable to demonstrate that intelligence and thus not fitting into the boxes that the current academic system requires children to jump through, even when they may be physically impossible for some?

My heart sinks when I read this because I know that both my highly intelligent DDs are still going to face this sort of outdated perception throughout their lives. Not being very academic in the sense of “not being intelligent” is completely unrelated to having SEN. Obviously. And thank God, we know that now. My DDs are both ND - one has dyslexia and one has ADHD. They both fall within the top 1% for intelligence - CAT scores of 140 etc. DD1(11) wants to work at CERN and I think that sort of career would suit her very well. They don’t have problems because “they’re not very clever” - the inability to make the letters stay still when you look at them, for example, is not about being clever or not clever. It’s just a different way of processing information. I found school and exams quite easy - I didn’t fave their difficulties. They might not get 9s in GCSE English, but they have much stronger intellectual abilities than me. They take after DH, thank goodness!

The thing is if an exam has a time limit that is because it is more difficult to do it under time restriction. Speed of thinking is a part of intelligence and it is ridiculous to compensate 'slow-thinking' students with extra time.
You can't have it both ways!

’Not being as clever’ isn’t how you qualify for extra time.

I absolutely agree that they are better than nothing, but unfortunately I’m not sure they can put our children in the same position they would have been in had they never had those difficulties in the first place - they aren’t an equaliser. I’m not sure what could do that, really. Perhaps choosing not to test them on spelling in the first place, in the same way as we wouldn’t test a child with a hearing impairment by reading the exam questions aloud in a busy room. It might not be absolutely impossible for them to access the questions, and there are of course strategies they can use to try to help, but it’s always going to be a damn sight harder for them to do well, however much time they get.

Dyslexic DD has exams next week. Because she has had to put so much effort into practising spelling (for which she has to sit two papers), she has inevitably had less time to spend on other subjects and will probably do worse on those. I accept it’s just part of her difficulties, and we work with it, but I have to laugh a bit at the idea that everything is solved by her being given an extra 15 minutes.

True. I'd mute it and step back.

DS2 had additional time for his dyslexia. It did mitigate for his slower reading and writing speeds. It didn't mitigate for his spelling and ability to apply multiple levels of expectation (e.g. legible writing, spelling, punctuation etc... he had skills in isolation but struggles with combining them)
When he got 100 on his SPAG paper, his weakness for spelling meant that he had to score higher on the punctuation and grammar side of the mark scheme to overall reach the threshold of expected standard.
Without additional time, he wouldn't have answered enough questions to get enough marks.

Time doesn't subsitute for skills or knowledge.

DS1 also has dyslexia with side orders of dyspraxia and autism.
He did SATs in 2022 where lengthy Covid rules coming in shortly after his diagnosis really hampered dialogue with the school and getting his needs met. His teacher who I finally met for the first time less than 3 months before SATs said "he's doing well enough" and refused to consider access arrangements. He was confidently predicted GD for maths for years.
He didn't get it.
Not even by a narrow margin. "He got anxious" was the excuse. Well duh, that's why autism is a legitimate reason for access arrangements... plus the dyslexia and dyspraxia affecting his ability to apply his knowledge to the paper being substantial reasons in their own right.

Access arrangements aren't about meeting "good enough" it's about attempting to reasonably mitigate for barriers to show knowledge and skills on the test paper, and giving the best chance avaliable. As someone with no barriers to learning, access arrangements would not have assisted me as I could already comfortably write out what was required in the standard time allocation.

Funny how after telling DS1's experience to DS2's teacher, it was all sorted...

For SATs, DS1 gets the last laugh. School will set realistic targets for GCSE, and he'll look great value added compared to SATs. DS2 needed to do well and have that nuture for his own confidence. GCSEs will genuinely matter.

I think for some people the alternative is "Tough. If he cant write properly he should try harder. Not my kids fault" blah blah.

Some people will always see a perceived advantage where none exists. Yes our kids got/get extra time. Why? Because they suffered an incurable brain injury that will affect the rest of their lives. Do they want their kids to have that? Of course not, WE dont want our kids to have that FFS! They just want all that they have, plus what everyone else has as well regardless of why others have what they dont have.

Mute the group and if it sometimes has info you actually need then just skim it every few days (or get someone else to do it for you).

Honestly every time I read one of these threads I thank Om for the fact that Whatsapp didn’t exist when mine were this age.

“No, Other Parent. Your child is not in any way at a disadvantage because of these access arrangements. In the vast majority of cases, the children who find themselves in this situation have been subject to often very severe disadvantages compared to your able-bodied /NT child from the day they were born - lifelong disadvantages which will extend way beyond their Y6 SATS or their GCSEs. If you really, genuinely would like to discuss in more detail what is and isn’t fair in the hands that our respective children have been dealt by life, I would be very happy to chat to you further, but I’d be surprised if you really want to go down that road.

Incidentally, the access arrangements put in place for exams are meant to attempt to enable all children to access the exams and show what they know, despite any difficulties they may have in seeing/hearing/reading the question, and transferring their answers on to paper. In many cases, the accommodations made by these access arrangements, whilst better than nothing, are extremely blunt tools and often have only a minor effect in countering the lifelong disadvantages many of these children will face. If you have dyslexia, for example, an extra 20 minutes will not magically enable you to be able to spell correctly. You could literally sit there for a week or a month and still not be able to spell a word correctly. If you have ADHD, you may be allowed to get up and move around on the day of the exam, but that has a very small corrective effect on the disadvantage at which you have been placed by years of sitting in a classroom unable to focus because you were trying so, so hard not to get up out of your seat and conform to the behavioural requirements of that setting.

These access policies try to mitigate some of the unfairness these children face in education, but really they can only have a small mitigating effect. If your child isn’t in a position to need these then he or she has, has always had and will always have huge advantages over children who do need them. Your attempt to prevent these children from mitigating such unfairness and even bringing the children’s starting points a tiny bit closer to one another is extremely surprising and rather brings to mind the phrase about how when you have always been privileged, a movement towards equality feels like oppression. I’m sure none of us want to teach our kids that the best way to live is to scramble in a gleeful way over the heads of anyone who has been born at a disadvantage. Or do you think that disabled children and their parents should “know their place” and leave school without any educational qualifications?”

Or maybe not, in reality. I’ve never been brave enough to say that out loud to anyone in real life, obviously. But this subject does rather grate on me, as you can probably tell. And breathe.

It's all about metrics. Doesn't benefit children one iota.

But the bitchy mum(s) in this WhatsApp group are not really bothered about extra time, or care why someone has it, they are concerned that a "top set in secondary school" place might be given to another child. For some reason they are utterly convinced that SATS results and only SATS results are the deciding factor for children's progress in their educational life.

X child got extra time in their SATS which means my child won't get into college. Talk about making a mountain over a molehill (and good luck secondary school teachers of these children).

Sats are nonsense and a total waste of time.