Yr 6 SATS and GCSE 'flight path'

[Thingsthatgo]

Firstly, as an ex teacher, I think that using the SATS as an indicator of GCSEs is questionable, but I have not looked into the stats.
My question is this.... if a child gets 100% in their SATS do they get predicted 8s and 9s at GCSE, or does it not work like that?
Is it a prediction for all GCSEs, or just maths and english because that is what the SATS test?

Achieving lower grades on SATs can also be problematic. For a number of reasons one of mine gained fairly average SATs scores. This means that with GCSEs looming the school has little incentive to provide additional support to maximise grades because they are technically exceeding all targets set based on a couple of tests in yr11. The low expectations can follow a student for five years. Although perhaps not as stressful as inflated target grades they are a blunt tool.

What would be interesting is to see some data analysis on how many children nationally achieve at GCSE in line with the "flight path" projected from their Y6 SATS. Presumably this data must exist? Are the projections from SATS broadly accurate, I wonder, or is there actually not much correlation at all?

In my dd's case, the "flight path" projected by her Y6 SATS was actually bang on what she actually got in her GCSEs, but I don't know how common/unusual this is?

If you think about it, because of what the ‘expected level of progress’ means, statistically on average pupils will get the grades predicted by the ‘expected progress’.

That doesn’t mean that every child will, but because ‘expected progress’ is set by definition such that Progress 8 is 0 if a child makes it (and is then normally distributed around 0), the cohort will do so on average.

I can see the purpose for evaluting schools but there is little value at an individual level of knowing. Although I guess at least we know why the school has little incentive to invest further in dc.

Well, yes, it's obviously an average of some sort, but is it a mean or a median or a mode or what? I guess I'm just wondering if the SATS are generally an accurate predictor or not!

Wow 100% in all his SATS....that's astounding. Absolute top 0.5% I'd say. Spag, reading comprehension 3 papers, maths 3 papers, wowee. I would suggest then 9s across the board is more than achievable!

It is obviously a better predictor of likely grades in the subjects tested both at SATs and GCSE - Maths and English language (to an extent) - than at eg Art or PE.

Overall, it’s adequate for some subjects for some children, at a ‘7-9’ vs ‘1-3’ sort of level. It’s not that great at eg 7 vs 8 or 5 vs 6 in DT…..

I'm not sure whether my DD's school use CATs or SATs or a mix of both to predict but I do think the pressure of being predicted a lot of 9's is problematic and unrealistic. Teachers don't help either by giving rewards to children who exceed their predicted grades in tests. If you are predicted a 9 and get a 9 in a test, no reward. If you get an 8, you are seen as underperformed. No wonder there is a mental health crisis in teens.

I think also from what have seen the nature particularly of primary school English is quite different to that assessed in GCSE English. I am not saying that both are not useful but they seem to tap different skills and probably little value in predicting other subjects. I imagine that in a general way a child doing really well in yr6 is likely to do well in yr11, depending on intervening life events, but some schools/ teachers treat it as much more important than I imagine the designers of the system intended.

At my kids secondary school they have gone away from flight paths based on SATS as they feel they are misleading. For my Y9 daughter it is all meeting / exceeding language and no forecast or target grades. Not sure what will happen as she goes into GCSE years. But not all schools use that very blunt tool.

I imagine that in a general way a child doing really well in yr6 is likely to do well in yr11, depending on intervening life events, but some schools/ teachers treat it as much more important than I imagine the designers of the system intended.

Do not blame schools or teachers - blame those like Ofsted and the Government who ascribe such importance to schools’ Progress 8 in league tables, reports and published datasets.

I don't blame the schools... although the pressure on my yr 6 Ds is completely unnecessary. It's almost worth telling DS to slack off the SATS a bit, to remove the expectation and pressure of exceptional GCSE results.

I most schools in our area do CAT at the beginning of year 7 to set TARGET grades, and it’s should be less about pressure on the children but holding themselves to account to get the pupils to reach their potential.
CATs (in particular verbal reasoning) have been proven to be pretty accurate in predicting future success.

The senior leaders I know don’t trust SAT as some schools are just better at getting their children to do them. I feel for your children feeling pressure from this but I guess you can try to support them and put the whole thing in perspective.

You might want to have a mooch around the govt ready reckoners and KS2 to KS4 transition matrices

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ready-reckoners-and-transition-matrices-for-key-stage-4

My eldest did SATs last year and came out with slightly unusual results as he has SpLDs, so he got greater depth in Maths and Reading Comprehension, passed SPAG by a few marks and then was assessed by the teacher as significantly (approx 2-3 years) behind in Writing. With SATS and CATs in year 7 he has now been given targets of 7/8/9 in all subjects, it seems pretty mad but clearly thats what the computer says.

Thanks @noblegiraffe, that's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.

Kind of. Our DD didn't really start getting predictions until end of Y10. Before that school showed us roughly what percentile of the year she was achieving at but it was never presented as predicted grades. The only kids who got all 8/9s in their predictions were those who completely aced their Y10 summer exams.

Behind the scenes, I imagine there was a lot of data, and pressure on the teachers to keep them on a 8/9 flightpath, but it wasn't shared with us or the students.

There are pros and cons to life without predictions. They would have been quite useful when she was taking her options.