To think that SATS are more important than people let on?

Your sons secondary school did use SATs for lots of things - benchmarking, progress measures, target pupils etc etc - they just didn’t tell you.

Same thing applies for EYFS scores, Phonics screening, KS1 tests (when mandatory), yr 4 times table check and ks2 SATs - it’s about seeing who “has” to pass the next stage/thing.

They are in a system from 4 yrs old - and schools are held accountable for getting or not getting them to the next pass in the next test - you just didn’t know it.

My ds' senior school didn't use SATs, preferring to reassess each child as they joined.

The senior school didn't use sets either.

Well, they aren’t always. Lots of schools assess the children within a few weeks of entering Year 7.
Those results are the ones used.
Setting comes later.

In all of my years of teaching Secondary school, SATs have never been anything other than an absolute menace. The majority of results wildly overestimate a child’s actual ability. Many children come to us having clearly had some kind of help with the paper (either that or they forgot everything the second they completed the paper). We test as soon as they come into year 7 and children move up and down sets as they move through the school. For various reasons, my own daughter will not sit her SATs. If it were down to me I would scrap them!

This is exactly what happens… and that spreadsheet of kids and their grades/interventions/sets/progress or lack of it is discussed/interrogated/pored over at many senior leadership meetings to the point of ridiculousness.

Same here at our secondary. Use as a benchline throughout

The government/FFT uses them to form the flight path for gcse predicted grades

CAT4 testing/estimates from the big edudata companies/professional judgement. Had to do it last year, doing it this year, do it every year for privately educated, EHE and new to the country kids.

Same way that primaries won't have a government decreed target for those who didn't have or sit KS1 SATs will do.

what happens if a child arrives in year 7 that hasn't done SATS then? how do they measure improvement and determine sets for them?

I wish I hadn’t read this 😭

Our school has bands eg x,y,z and within each band there are typically 4 sets. The top set in each band is always the biggest, usually around 30 but can be as high as 34. The bottom set is always the smallest, as low as 10 to compensate for both the additional needs of this group but also a greater tendency for behavioural issues. The middle sets have numbers somewhere inbetween. It doesn’t always follow though that behaviour gets worse as you go down - we’ve had lovely bottom sets with high needs but good behaviour, and a few rotten apples in the top sets who spoil it for everyone else and it’s harder for the teacher to keep control and identify who’s causing the issues due to the size of the class. So based on that I would say YABU. There are plenty of opportunities to move up or down a set if the teachers agree that would be better and this does happen regularly. Also, behavioural clashes or bad alliances between students in the same class can be managed by moving the troublemaker to the same set in a different band. This is less common than set changes within the band but does happen.
At our school they do a shake up of sets at the end of year 9 anyway before starting the GCSE content and cream off a ‘true’ top set, moving them all into the same band. My DC found this an improvement on the first 3 years as it got rid of the ‘bad apples’.

I think most people realise they have some importance. But my ds1 is in y6 and the pressure on them is immense, so people say they aren’t important to try and relieve some pressure on the kids but also themselves.

What year did your child leave?

Data aside, a lot of children find that having sat thier SATs and survived, it gives them that a bit of resilience for the gcses.

The two groups that missed thier sats seem to be lacking that context of it will be ok in the end. Just anecdotally from governor meetings I've sat in at a few secondaries.

When my two DC were at the local secondary, the school did CAT in Y7. They used to tell me, the CAT results predicted the exam grades at GCSE, and DC should get the top grades. (They did) They never mentioned the Y6 SATs to me, with regard to DC.

DS did SATs in Y8 for English, maths and science. He was the only one in his year to get Level 8 in science. While he got all A*s and As at GCSE, he didn’t do so well in the three sciences at A level.

I dimly remember being put in sets for maths/science the second term of Y7, and for other subjects not until Y8. SATS do not appear to have been a major factor, despite the massive amount of emphasis that was put on them in Y6.

I never had a clue what the children's SAT scores were in any of the secondary schools that I worked in. They all had to sit a computer adaptive test in Yr 7 that measured their underlying ability and those were used to measure progress and predict grades.

Used all the way through secondary at our school for setting, expected grades, expected improvement. SATs are used as a baseline to measure improvement. Quoted on every school report. I don’t think there’s much point studying for them though.

My DCs secondary school started in mixed sets for year 7 and then were assessed and put into sets. It was nothing to do with SATS. It may just be her school, I don't know, but I'm sure secondary schools would be interested in the teacher assessments from year 6 as well as the SATs.

I don’t think they’re important at all. My dc did mediocre on SATS. She got placed into sets with all the mediocre disruptive kids. It wasn’t a good fit. In Y8, they moved her into top sets and she’s consistently in 80-90% compared to cohort average in her sets of 50-60%. I think she just didn’t test well in SATS because there was so little focus on deeper learning and understanding because it was all about constant practice tests for all of Y6.

I've had 3 go through secondary school and one in Y7 and my experience is that they do their own setting themselves in the first few weeks of Y7 and level set everybody. Prep schools dont do SATS so if they get kids in year 7 coming from private primary, or a different country, they dont even have any SATS. Ive never heard anything about predicted grades until year 9 at the earliest and even then its tentative.

Parents think they aren’t important because ‘they retest in yr 7/8, they don’t set at my school, it won’t determine what they’ll get in 5 yrs time” etc etc etc.

However, despite all these “visible” things for parents it doesn’t change the fact that if a child goes to secondary having met the expected standard in their SATs - secondary schools then “have” to get them them to at least 5 GCSEs (including maths and English) or otherwise they risk poor performance measures and a poor Ofsted. Whereas if a child just misses the SATs pass mark then they don’t “have” to get them to this benchmark at 16.

I’m sure secondary schools try hard for all pupils but if I was head teacher then I’d definitely work hardest with those I had to get to pass (as well as hunting for those borderline fails at 11 which I could pull up by the time they were 16). Plus this would probably guide which students I put my best teacher in front of and a TA if my school could afford one.

In fact if I was being realistic I suspect all those who have to pass will be marked on tracking sheets (irrespective of which set/class they are in) and also those possible borderline improvers would also be highlighted to help teachers know who best to target.

Sats are important but not as important as the data secondary schools collect in year 7 and year 10. Always ask for that data.