SATS cheating - by the Head!

Yes what you stated about secondary schools is correct. The government like SATa because jt helps to show progress, etc. Secondary are forced to use English and Maths SATs to predict GCSEs in all subjects like Languages, DT, Art, which is ridiculous.
But unfortunately students often show up to secondary with very high SATs that they never live up to. Repeatedly told they aren't making necessary levels of progress, underachieving or other equivalent wording. Students then struggle with confidence and motivation as they are still working hard but not able to match those gcse predictions.
Because, let's face it, lots of primary schools do exactly what your head did. They spoon feed/cheat/ support a bit too much. Which helps the kid in the moment, helps the primary school look like they have brought the progress of that child on so, so much... but long term it doesn't help the child.

I’m not going to tell you to report or not report. However the headteacher at my kids junior school was sacked just after my eldest child started there for falsifying SATS results. She was otherwise a good headteacher and probably never worked in a school again.

Morally wrong, but SATS are not important to the child,only an indicator of school performance so think carefully about the life you will ruin and the reasons why before you do anything.

You can teach your own kids what she did wasn’t the norm and why it may be wrong without turning a world upside down.

Erm- clearly not a member of SLT from a UK school then? Apart from the current hiatus, historically SATs data has been used-
schoolsweek.co.uk/no-school-progress-measure-for-next-two-years/

That’s what I said. 😂

Incorrect.

SATS are pointless.

SATS are not a clear indicator of how well a school performs.

Our school is a military school - sometimes 40% of the year group can be students that have only just arrived several months before. If the SATS results are low, that’s not an indication that the school is shit, which it isn’t.

Note the word 'recommend', @Orangesinthebag and @DidStart. It's rather a crucial one.

Secondary base sets on a combination k SATs, CATs, teachers reports and a few other things. They also swap sets about all the time after actually getting to know the kids. So two answers isn't going to effect this

Yeah the headteacher was not doing it to help the child. As if. They were doing it to help themselves- so their school would do better than it deserves too. I don't imagine for a moment that this was the only child they cheated with.
As for an independent school head PP condoning and excusing cheating, that is very disappointing behaviour.

You are entirely wrong and have zero understanding how this works.

Google it if you don’t believe the many people on this thread telling you otherwise.

You’re conflating what happened to your individual child with cohort level statistics. It is very apparent what level children are working at in secondary. Teachers do not put children struggling in middle/top sets for 5 years because of what their SAT score was.

I'm sure those of you who say this is ok would have looked at the Ofsted report for the school they were planning to send their DC to. Even though they don't say it, the SATs results have a huge impact on the report. Any school that does not do well is likely to get a bad report and vice versa. That would be why the Head was cheating - to save their own skin.

Completely incorrect.

My other DD “failed” her SATs. Same school.

It was doesn’t done in that way.

It was a “you might want to have a look at that again” way.

My DD is in the bottom set, will always be in the bottom set.

It was in her best interests to “pass” as the detrimental effect “failing” would have on her for years ahead would have been quite severe.

SATS do not matter.

You move sets at secondary school every term if necessary.

What does matter is the school increased the number of children achieving age related expectations (passing) by doing this.

That could mean any of the following:

• there’s poor quality of education at the school being hidden
• your child should have had more intervention strategies to support them or there is an additional need not being raised which will take longer to address in secondary
• the department for education thinks children are performing better and doesn’t invest funding adequately etc.

However maybe if she hadn't 'passed' (I guess you mean scored 100 or above) maybe her secondary school would have targeted her for more/earlier help.

They do matter.

And teaching children that cheating is OK, is not OK.

I don't think this is that uncommon tbh

My DD only “passed” her SATS along with some others, due to this type of “help”

SATS are pointless, it doesn’t matter.

I’ve been teaching y6 (and am also SLT) for over 15 years and am lucky to work in a school where we follow the rules! I do put 2 adults in every room but I do this to protect my staff should there be an allegation of maladministration made. This is clear in the test administration guidance as a recommendation not a rule:

Headteachers will need to consider the staff resource required to administer the tests. We recommend having at least 2 test administrators in each test room, so the headteacher can have confidence in the integrity of test administration.

Our SATS results are important to us as a school (not the individual children) we do take them seriously but they aren’t so important that we would risk jobs by cheating.

Teachers can alter internal target grades but cannot alter the Progress 8 target grade which all secondary schools are judged on nationally and, in part, are based on SATs scores

Students with artificially high target grades can face extra pressure from secondary to try to raise their GCSE through extra interventions etc. At the end of the day the secondary schools are judged on ‘value added’ based on KS2 starting points, so if cheating has made this starting point too high secondary schools will have to act accordingly to avoid looking like pupils haven’t made enough progress

Not saying I agree with it but definitely does happen

On the other hand my grandson was virtually written off at primary school and told he was 'good at sport'. It badly affected his self-esteem but when he went to secondary he was re-tested with an open mind and put in the top sets with support for his dyslexia.

The whole system should be scrapped. I'm a retired teacher btw and my daughter was also a teacher at the time.

This.

SATs have no bearing on the children's future, the Secondary schools will most likely test them again. My grandchildren's school did because they know how unreliable the primary results are. SATs are there to test and rank the schools, no other reason, and the Head is trying to get ahead of other schools in the area. It doesn't help the children at all.

Contact the STA and report it. Do it anonymously if you want to. It's disgusting that the pupils and staff will have worked so hard and this just discredits everything they've done. It needs reporting.

Very concerned that you are a headteacher- your post shows a breathtaking lack of integrity and understanding about the purpose of SATs.

I'm glad my children aren't in your school!

It is strictly against the SATs policies though. Staff can't indicate if anything is right or wrong at any point in the tests.

One of my sons did better in his English SATS by a couple of marks and got a level 5. He was chuffed.

For his entire secondary school career he was told he was failing because he didn't get the grades his SATS "predicted". (As if English SATS can predict your grade in Art.)

By Y9 he was utterly sick of it and by Y11 completely disengaged. Those predictions, based on a good performance in one test when he was 10, hung over his whole time in secondary. Every term he was given a report telling him he was wasn't enough.