SATS cheating - by the Head!

Why? They are totally pointless anyway.

who cares?

most secondaries immediately do CAT tests anyway so it’s all a monumental waste of efforts and time.

can’t believe you’d care all that much and as for reporting it WOW. they probably knew it was an error your child made in haste and gave them a steer.

wait til you find out how many primary schools fudge the phonics testing ;)

I think “that parent” is a parent being difficult for the sake of it, or thinking rules don’t apply to their precious baby. I don’t think being unhappy about cheating is being “that parent”. Unless you’d basically class any complaint from a parent as being unreasonable.

There is no ‘pass or fail’ in SATs.

That’s not what happens. For those of you interested, it is possible to report Maladministration to STA. After they receive a report, they may investigate further and as part of that investigation may contact the LA to ask them to also investigate.
At no point are children interviewed, nor are they asked to resit any of the tests. The outcome could be that the results are nulled and the school does not receive scores for that test; the Headteacher could be dismissed for gross misconduct; the school will receive monitoring visits next year or no further action could be taken. I have known schools where all 4 of those actions have happened.

I’m fairly sure I know which question you’re referring to, and honestly, if I’m right (which I think I am), your child is a borderline and that extra mark may have made all the difference between them passing or failing. I can’t really understand why you’d report the school for allegedly cheating when it was your own child. Honestly chill out. Don’t be that parent

And presumably undermining the capability of the subsequent secondary school, when children with inflated marks don’t do as well as they’d be expected to.

I don’t understand. Did the TA tell you they’d done this? I’m assuming not, they wouldn’t have known how you’d react?
But it can’t have been your son, or he wouldn’t have been thrilled when he passed?

No, they’ve cheated. The guidance issued is very clear what assistance a child can have - and it certainly doesn’t include telling them when they’ve got an answer wrong.

Ask your Data Manager what the significance of KS2 data is for Progress 8 measurement and come back to me once they've very patiently explained the significance of the Reading and Maths scores to you.

I'm not particularly surprised. A large cohort of posters have little regard for honesty.

Were you in the room?

If you are indeed an ‘independent school headteacher’, I’m amazed that you condone cheating and think that doing so should be ignored because they’re ’helping your child’!

SATs should have been got rid of years ago!

Your child's 11 year old SATs will not make a difference to GCSE results- unfortunately the year 9 ones do with foundation papers generally if a score below the level etc.

They tend to move kids about between groups in core subjects anyway before year 10.

Exactly. And by cheating, which results in kids ending up with higher targets than their ability will allow them to attain, this Headteacher is not only condemning kids to the disappointment of being permanently lower than their targets, he is also making secondary teachers look as though they are failing those kids. It's an arsehole thing to do.

the Headteacher at my DDs school got fired for falsifying SATs results.

I think if the TA doesn’t report it and you do, her job could be at risk.

YANBU - report it. The children shouldn't be "devastated" because responsible and caring parents and teachers should surely have already told them already that their individual sats results don't matter one bit, it's a test of the school not the child, and so long as they do their best it's fine whatever happens.

But the head teacher should be sacked. Manipulating sats results is directly misleading the government, ofsted and parents as to the capability of the school.

This happend.to my ds several years ago, he was sen and borderline pass. A ta sat next to him and gave a very slight shake of the head when he hovvered over an incorrect answer. Immoral yes, but his face when he realised he'd passed was stunning.

A teacher at my DS school paid a heavy price for helping his pupils cheat, he ultimately took his own life which was very sad, he was a nice man and was loved by parents and pupils alike, but was caught out and as I say paid the price. This is the article about him. 'I was banned from teaching for helping my pupils cheat' - BBC News

Im with you OP. Cheating is wrong and, whilst I sympathise with all schools that have to go through these ridiculous tests, doing what he did cheats everyone. And you are correct lots of schools use them to ‘set’ children in secondary which makes it even worse.

It’s shit behaviour on the part of the primary school! Cheating in SATS leads to kids being put in higher sets than they are capable of when they get to secondary, and provide a stick for secondary schools to be beaten with.

So can I. In a discussion with the deputy head in my last school I eventually said "do you want me to write the coursework for them?" He replied "if that's what it takes - yes".

And having googled, the Colburn School maladministration mentioned in this article is even more….(stupid).

@Dilemmaramma I’m sure this isn’t true. My understanding is that the SATs are used as a baseline for where the pupil is, and the expected trajectory. If they drop significantly from that trajectory then questions would be asked. They’re certainly not used for GCSE predictions. They do mocks in year 10 for that.