Would you send your dc to these SATS revision sessions?

[Woody479]

Dd is 10 and in year 6. The school are running these classes once a week for an hour after school starting next week and finishing the week before the tests in May.

Last term they sat the previous years tests and DD was (sorry I can’t remember the actual terms for it) but ‘above’ for reading and ‘at’ the expected level for everything else.

My gut instinct is to not send her to them. My main reason for this is that I don’t want her coached to do well in them which may then give her a better result than her actual ability. The results are used to set them in secondary school but they’re tested again within the first term. I wouldn’t want her to then be disappointed at being moved down a set or constantly made to feel that she’s not reaching the targets expected of her. Also, she’s 10 years old, these aren’t GCSE’s. I know they mean a lot to the teachers and the school but I don’t want the extra pressure put onto her. I’ve asked her if she wants to do them and she said no.

I wouldn’t, unless she asks to. I hate the ways SATs have become so highly stressed, when I was at primary they were just presented as ‘tests’ and we did a small amount of prep for them.

I’ve been working in secondary education for years and SATs grades are a pain in the arse. The government uses them to forecast GCSE grades so students that are over-coached end up with great grades and are our ‘high prior attainers’. A significant number of these students (mostly the boys at our school) become disengaged in secondary school (inner city catchment area with lots of gang culture etc) and it goes on to massively affect the schools outcomes (progress 8 scores).

Obviously there’s a good chance that won’t be the case for your DD but I just find SATS so pointless. And my school doesn’t even use them for streaming in year 7, we don’t stream until year 8 for core subjects and 9 for others. Until then they are set based on a number of factors (male to female ratios, it’s a predominately male school, and spreading out students from different schools, for example). So not all secondary’s use them for streaming.

No
There's no point in having the school artificially boost the results of an exam that most secondary schools will ignore.

An "artificial" SATS score will mean an "artificial " GCSE target grade which will mean extra stress on your kids later.

If she wants to go I'd consider after Easter only but if she has any extra curricular activities definitely prioritize those over SATS booster classes

I agree with most that an artificially boosted SATs grade leads to artificially inflated GCSE targets (yes, secondary schools know they are balls, but we're still assessed using them as a baseline for Progress 8), and that this can lead to a student being 'below' target for the next five years and feeling like shit.

I have a Year 8 boy predicted a 9 at GCSE. He's bright, not sure if he's 9 bright, but he sure as hell isn't getting the 97% he'd need to hit his targets at the moment!

However, all the others will have artificially inflated targets... so having a realistic target may lead to being set with lower ability pupils, not being pushed (because teachers are focused on getting an equally bright child that extra grade so they aren't seen to be making negative progress), and feeling 'less', because less is expected of them.

On balance, if she's likely to get 'too set' scores on her own I wouldn't send her and let her have 'soft' targets. Otherwise I'd encourage, but not force, her to go.

I wouldn't worry about her dropping on the CATs or whatever, the rest of them probably will too.

nope, and i've told the school not to even ask, because the answer will be no.

The SATS do not exist in my house, DD will not do any homework relating to them, nor will she attend any extra tuition during or after school hours.

I quite strongly object to them on principle and would withdraw her completely if I could.

No because SATS mean nothing. Fortunately my sons school seems to agree. There's enough pressure on children as it is.

Many many posters wrongly saying it doesn't matter/schools ignore/set their own.

That's not what I understood.
I was told that it's sets the targets for the child from 1st day or secondary to GCSE's.

Isn't it government guidelines? All schools have to go this, whether the parents and children agree or not?

Urgh. I'd say don't send her but I know I would feel uncomfortable if everyone else was going.

But saying that. I have never ever put any pressure on either ds's re SATs. And both were completely unbothered, and just worked away at it, neither has been stressed at all. Competitive yes. Stressed no.
These schools that cause all this stress to children over SATs drive me wild.

Are you sure she isn’t borderline to pass in anything? Ime after school tuition us for those at risk of not getting the required level. I’d ask how comfortable she is to pass and then go from there.

All state secondary schools are judged on their "progress 8", which basically means the progress kids make from Y7 to Y11 in secondary school. The school is given a target for each child based on SATs.

What the secondary school does with that information and how they share it is up to the school. Some may use it to set children initially in some subjects, but over time, children will usually migrate their way to the set that is the right fit for them.

Some schools will make students aware of their progress 8 target grade, and continually assess them against this for their whole school career. Some will use it to decide who to offer extra revision/support to. Some will make kids continuously retake assessments if they aren't "on target".

Some schools won't do any of this- which might be a good thing but equally might cause issues if your child is coasting along below their potential, and you're not made aware of this.

I'm talking old grades because I left teaching at the point that they changed, but it was a flaming PITA when you had a GCSE student in your subject expected to score a grade B (7?) in your subject purely because they were heavily coached to get a L5 in their primary school SATs, and they simply did not have the subject knowledge or aptitude in that subject to come anywhere close. (In the case I'm thinking of, I used my yR child (visiting due to strike action) to explain to the pupil 10 years older why a business was located in a certain place, because the message had failed to sink in for months. I was in a position where I couldn't explicitly tell him the answer, but felt that a conversation with my 5 year old on the theme did not completely destroy professional integrity!)

The statistical assumption that grade X in maths reading and writing is equal to grade X in English, arts, humanities, languages, technology etc 5 years down the line, is so incredibly flawed that it would be laughable if it didn't so often come at an emotional cost for pupils and staff alike.

While DS may have had an early appreciation of the GCSE syllabus, his dyslexia, dyspraxia and ASD mean that he is very not average in his skills and learning and prone to anxiety. I was happy for him to do the additional sessions not for the SATs outcome, but because they did support him developing basic literacy skills. The ASD referral began in the aftermath of y2 SATs as he was so highly strung in the months surrounding the tests, with a record meltdown of 4 hours triggered by asking him 3x if he'd changed his reading book.

When y6 comes around, I will consider closely how the extra sessions will benefit DS's wider education and what the cost is on his wellbeing particularly as he is very prone to post-school restraint collapse. If he is happy, that's fine. If they are skills that are genuinely helpful to his long term education, I'm grateful for the additional support, but I absolutely won't push him to do extra work purely for passing a test which is merely a stick for beating primary and secondary teachers with rather than a genuinely useful indicator of successful, rounded learning.