This is the recent KS2 English reading test that staff and pupils thought was hard

[cakeorwine]

Key stage 2 tests: 2023 English reading test materials - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Only had a quick look - but I thought people might find it interesting

@TeenDivided

He's average - meeting expectations in everything as I understand it.

Are you being serious? Of course most primary school children don't skim read. This thread is eye-opening.

But usually it's completely irrelevant that you as an adult find it ok. These kids are 10/11. They are young children and they it's them that were saying it wasn't ok. So it wasn't ok.

JustanothermagicMonday1 · Today 08:09

My Year 4 would find that paper OK. She reads real newspapers daily and mainly reads Classics because she enjoys complex language. She also reads Science and History books regularly.

If children do not read enough and widely then SATS papers will be harder. However, there are plenty of children who do read widely like my DC so someone does need to cater to them “

our youngest was like yours, reading Wodehouse in Y5 . His class tutor told us that she would often make a literary or current affairs joke or reference in class and only he and one or two others would “get it”. She did tell us this was unusual. If so many parents, teachers and pupils are reporting difficulty, it probably does need looking at.

My son is 10 and in year 6. He doesn’t do sats as we are in wales and they were scrapped years ago. He is average in English and not a keen reader. I know he would struggle to read all of the text and have enough time to answer the questions in this test. He would probably be capable of answering a lot of them but he would definitely run out of time to do so.

I don't think it's difficult as long as their reading age is where it should be. And they are methodical.

My Ds could have completed that at 10yo with a decent score.

The trouble is primary schools make such a ridiculous fuss about SATs, and make their pupils so stressed, that the kids get them out of proportion and panic.

As others have said the issue comes from the fact that even the most capable of reader would struggle to answer the whole paper properly in an hour. The amount of content made it impossible for many and made too many feel like a failure because they couldn’t finish.

The questions aren't hard. The length of the pieces to read is hard. I don't remember having that much to read in my O level English language (admittedly many years ago!!)

DS took this. He's fairly high ability, only started school in yr 2 though so learned to read, spell etc differently. He said that he didn't find it overly hard, the questions were quite easy, the texts were long. He finished, but not with lots of time left over to check back.

Why are we making children take tests?

That's the bigger question.

Exactly. It's bullshit.

I don’t think it’s an easy paper but I do think that children who are of a reasonable standard of reading and comprehension should be able to answer a decent proportion of that paper correctly.

I don’t know what mark children would need to reach the required standard this year. However, last year, a mark of 29/50 gave a scaled score of 100. Presumably the required mark will be lower this year because of the difficulty. That means that a child could get almost half of the questions wrong and still reach the required standard.

I agree that lower ability children should also be able to access at least some of the questions, but it’s also important that higher ability children are given an opportunity to excel. Higher ability Y6 children will be able to answer the majority of those questions correctly. The problem with making that paper any easier is that we know teachers spend weeks/months preparing their classes for SATS (understandably, because that’s what schools’ performance is based on). If the papers were easier, teachers wouldn’t need to teach to a higher level and stretch the most able pupils.

If that level of paper really isn’t even remotely accessible to children who perform below average academically, perhaps there’s an argument that there should be two levels of paper so that every child is catered for. It’s not fair on more able children to just say “oh well you’ll have a chance to excel at secondary level”. A decent education and the possibility of high academic achievement should start with primary education. Some children need to be stretched before secondary level, in the same way that other children should be helped with areas where they struggle.

“Why are we making children take tests?

That's the bigger question.”

Because Labour scrapped grammar schools in the 60s etc and devised a comprehensive system for all that does not really work. So instead they now do SATS and CATs because kids need to be streamed in comps because IQs just are not the same. And we need doctors, lawyers, engineers and auditors for the country to work.
Labour also fed the private school system by doing so and now they want to attack that too. Nice race to the bottom for all.

All in a post Brexit world where we live on a small shitty island and need to compete with Asia etc in the long run. Our kids will need to be able to critically analyse complex information in a digital world. It is more important not less important than it used to be.
Stop snowflaking the whole next generation and setting them up to fail. Kids need to learn that they need not be able to answer all questions, they need to stay calm, try their best, it is OK to not be the best at academics but to just try your best. Not everyone is the best at football or art either and this should just be one facet of it.

They can be streamed in comps without tests at primary.

Dd was streamed instantly in year 7 due to Sats results then spent the next two years being moved up and down sets anyway!

Sats don't contribute to any of this.

And who is to say the next most important human rights lawyer isn't a girl in year 6 who panics and screws up the SATS paper so gets put into the bottom stream at secondary and reinforces the idea that she's shit at exams so never fulfils her potential.

Back in the real world for those who actually have kids in y6 or are teaches of y6- can tell you that the more able we’re only just finishing this paper on time.
What pie in the sky are you basing your ‘more able comments on?’

They didn't run sats for a few years during COVID and kids were streamed just fine. Dd didn't do sats, they did 'cats' when they arrived in year 7 and based on those plus info from primary teacher they were streamed.

My first thoughts on it are, rustling? Really? That’s so Famous Five. Yes, I know that theft is a problem in rural areas but 1980s KS2 me would’ve been thrown by that so 20s KS2 children must’ve been very confused.

The next is the length of it. Reading speed varies. If you want to test comprehension surely you should give the children enough time to get through the texts and then work through the questions. That test is going to give a lot of misleading results because children ran out of time or worried that they were going to and rushed it. It’s a good test of exam technique but is that what it’s supposed to be?

Ds and Dn were the two years lucky enough to have not had to do SATs - a benefit of covid. Somehow the secondary schools have still managed to stream and challenge appropriately!

I am very against SATs but a few people on here have used the “need to push more able pupils” as an argument to justify the difficulty of the tests this year. When I did my SATs many moons ago at ks2 and ks3 I was given an extension paper which gave the chance to push myself and others who were in the more able side. If we have to persist maybe back to a more streamed approach would be better rather than knocking confidence by making children feel they can’t

I am a retired teacher. To me this looks like a test that would stretch the brightest year6 pupils if it was attempted well. There is enough in the illustrations and the story to engage most children of this age group. Remember the class will have been taught to tackle guided reading exercises throughout the year and should be well able to make a good effort at answering within their capabilities.

The number of posters writing something along the lines of 'my highly able child would be able to do this, no problem' is interesting.

It demonstrates the lack of comprehension in adults too - there's absolutely no recognition from these posters, despite others writing about it, that part of the issue is that a considerable swathe of less confident readers would have had difficulty accessing the test this year.

“And who is to say the next most important human rights lawyer isn't a girl in year 6 who panics and screws up the SATS paper so gets put into the bottom stream at secondary and reinforces the idea that she's shit at exams so never fulfils her potential.”

That is a pile of crock and you know it. If she is driven and told it doesn’t matter she can learn from the experience.

If she is going to be a human rights lawyer she needs to develop resilience.
Any good teachers in the comp will soon see her potential anyway and move her up.
If you want a good job, one thing you need to learn is to perform under a bit of pressure. The more you practise it the better you get. My DC all did multiple music exams - they never panicked in 11 plus, SATs or GCSEs. We always told them it didn’t matter - they are just practising for the big stuff later on and developing revision and focus skills.

Aside from the arguments about how hard the children found the paper, some of the media reports quoting teachers and headteachers are concerning.

From the BBC report today :

”Even staff "had to really think" about the answers, the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) said.”

In another extract from the BBC example, a question which was apparently picked out as being one of the more difficult ones:

”in which American state is the Congress Avenue Bridge found?”

“Answer: The answer is Texas but the teacher told us it was likely children would not be familiar enough with American geography to know that Austin is not a state.”

The answer is literally laid out in black and white in the text. Children do not need a geographical knowledge of the USA.

“Austin is the capital city of the state of Texas in the USA.”

If headteachers and teachers can’t answer these questions easily, then I think there needs to be questions asked about the standard of teachers in this country. I’m hoping it’s just journalists putting their own spin on teachers’ quotes. Surely no teacher could possibly argue they personally find the paper hard? That’s a whole different issue from the children finding it hard.

It speaks volumes about you that you think this scenario is 'a pile of crock'.

I hope your kids are as financially and academically successful as you hope.

@DoctorLawn - It demonstrates the lack of comprehension in adults too - there's absolutely no recognition from these posters, despite others writing about it, that part of the issue is that a considerable swathe of less confident readers would have had difficulty accessing the test this year.”

Our school was fine, even the less able readers. Because they were prepared, in the right way, academically and mentally speaking.

It is just another way for the press to attack Government and Education. Who cares, it is just a SATs paper. We all know they will attack GCSE papers etc - poor Covid generation, mark schemes etc.
Because education in this country is political. And Education should not be this political.