School test week

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DD 9 has come home saying it's 'test week'. Is this a national thing? Several hours of testing a day all week. Does it count toward anything?

I don't think it's national but many schools will be doing this. My Year 4 son has had the same, but it's called 'Assessment Week', used to check on their progress before the next batch of Parent's Evenings in Dec.

What year is she in? Are they maybe doing some “mock” SATS? I know some schools go overboard with these.

Most schools will have an assessment week termly or possibly half termly. It's most likely that. It's nothing to be worried about - staff will use the results to inform their planning and decide on intervention groups.

Very common to have an assessment week each term. It doesn't mean the whole week is tests. Usually it's a few lessons. It's a big part of getting a good understanding of where each child is, next steps and part of planning for the term ahead. It's not necessarily a national thing as every school does things differently but most schools will do something similar towards the end of a term.

No.

It's not national until year 6.

How's she got to age 9 without having had a test or assessment week at school?

Most schools have assessments during each school year. Less formal for younger primary age children but more formal as they get older.

The only English national tests at the same time are SATs in year 6 and GCSEs in year 11. Obviously also A levels too.

All other assessments are tests that the schools set and schedule themselves but pretty much all kids do them.

We've just had assessment week, whole school. The older children have one, sometimes two tests on one day ( so one short and one long or just one long) and the younger ones do " tasks" with their teacher in small groups. We then complete question level analysis, so for each question we record whether the child has acquired that skill or not. It is summative assessment, very different to the ongoing formative assessment we do on a daily basis but just as useful, can the child do the objective ( whatever it is) independently and at a distance from the direct teaching?
It gives us an indication of

1. individual security on different objectives- so we can plan interventions to plug gaps for individual children
2. how well an objective has been taught- if few children got a specific question right, then the objective needs teaching again!
3. individual progress through year group objectives to give an overall summative level.

Thanks. It's year 5. Parents evening was just before half term. She said teacher is disappointed in how class did on the science paper, but they don't know marks yet. I just told her it's a way for teacher to see what class has understood and to help them in areas they may need help with. Daughter feels hard done by that they were tested on some things they haven't learned yet. Things have changed a lot since I was at school!

It’s very normal. Year 4 teacher and we are doing assessment week this week.
it’s not several hours of testing, all week, for us though.
We did a half hour arithmetic and 60min reading today.
50min reasoning and 40min GPS tomorrow.
Thats all. Could spread it out and do one a day for four days, but the ch said they’d rather do it in two days and get it over with.

They've done 4 today and apparently doing them every day this week. One was just a spelling one so would have been quick. Just seems intense at 9, but then things are different to when I was at school. We had tests, but not week long versions, until senior school where we'd revise for exams etc.

Four a day seems a lot! We only test reading, writing, maths, grammar and spelling- maths is a couple of papers so up to 7 maximum ( for year 6, the younger classes have 3-4 papers only. )

I am genuinely appalled and it backs up the feelings of the head of one of the teachers unions, who I've heard on the radio a few times say that schools are now exam factories at the detriment of education and everyone involved in it.

Yeah it's standard in most primary schools (assessments are done termly, but schools will set their own 'week' or time in which they do them).

My school are doing them this week too - we use NFER tests in Years 1 to 5 and in Year 6 they do old SATS papers. Most schools use either NFER or PIRA tests, or equivalent (there a a few other standardised testing companies who produce papers for testing).

The assessments will be in Reading, maths, spelling and grammar. We have 3 x maths papers (1 x arithmetic and 2 x reasoning) and 2 x reading papers) plus the spelling and grammar tests.

We will also do an independent writing assessment this week and grade it.

It's very normal and we do this three times a year, every year in 'test conditions' (so tables will be moved, walls covered etc, the tests are timed, children won't have use of resources such as cubes and so on in the maths papers). They are well prepared and used to it...we practise for them and they know that they are happening.

Our primary has this - it’s usually the week before half term and then parents’ evening is a couple of weeks later.

There really is no pressure on the kids as far as I can tell - DD never even brings it up as something they’ve been doing that week.

I'm not saying this is right btw! But we have to 'data drop' termly and get grilled on 'pupil progress' every 6 weeks. When I say 'grilled' I mean grilled! This data is used to beat teachers and schools with, so testing is used (apparently) 'inform the data'.

It's wrong. Our education system is broken. We know this, but we (teachers) can do nothing about it.

I'm in the wrong for telling her that teacher would use results to see where help was needed. 'No, mum. She's still very disappointed in us over science, even the stuff we haven't been taught yet'. My son helpfully (not) told her 'you know these results follow you through school'.
There seems so much tickboxing. DD is one of the ones who hasn't really been challenged yet at school - it's all about reaching a milestone to tick a box. If you already reach it, there's no real challenge. It's 'help the others on your table'. There's no space to talk around a subject jn class if kids are interested. School is so much more soulless and prescriptive in many ways for kids and teachers now, or maybe I've got rose-tinted specs. I don't like the test pressure that teachers are under filtering through to the kids - my son is 8.

Homework is going through all the papers and correcting them. Teacher hasn't gone through papers with class.

I think that’s fine. Last week with my class, when I marked their test papers, I made a chart with all the gaps so I know what questions what pupils got wrong. Particular questions that a lot/majority of pupils got wrong, will be addressed as early morning work, flashback 4 sessions, additional arithmetic etc. And individual pupils gaps will be addressed through their target setting etc.
Some pupils have stayed with me or a TA during assembly time to go over certain things. Pupils who attend booster groups before and after school, I’ve passed on their gaps to the adult running the sessions. But we haven’t actually dedicated whole class time to going through the papers.
Dont just take your child’s word for what the teacher has or hasn’t done, they’ll do a lot behind the scenes and seem less let incorporate gaps from tests into future lessons/booster groups etc.

Maybe they'll do that this week. I think pretty much all lesson time apart from art, PE, music and phse was spent on tests last week. There might have been some time allocated to go over stuff out of their normal timetable. Some children do have extra targeted lessons before school if they're struggling.