To want to make sure that you are all aware of this...

[Ihavewelliesbuttheyrenotgreen]

...or have I got it all wrong. SATs don't matter. I saw a post on another thread which implied that if school did anything fun in the run up to her DCs SATs the poster would not be impressed. But SATS don't matter do they? I mean they've been scrapped in Secondary school and lots of primary schools boycott them . They're only there to test teachers and schools not the children themselves and they have no effect on children's futures. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm sure that this is case. I was quite shocked to see that people still cared about SATs tbh.

I'm torn on this one but just for personal reasons. Our school didn't have a brilliant reputation when ds started but I visited it anyway and was really impressed with the school and the Head Teacher, all the other teachers, the pupils who showed up round, classrooms and facilities that we sent them there despite being fourth on the SATS list out of five primary schools in our area. He had a very small class because of this.

We also sent dd there a couple of years later when the SATS results had picked and her class was nearly at full capacity.

Two years after she started the school was at the top of the SATS leader board and people were on a waiting list from out of catchment.

Basically the Head Teacher had started at the school some six years before ds had started and completely turned the whole school around. By the time ds started the school had a brilliant attitude and inspired good manners, hard work, positivity, etc and was just as good a good as it is now but the SATS restults weren't quite there. The school needed them to get the recognition it, the HT and all the staff and children needed for the hard work that had been put in over the years.

Dd was off sick with suspected glandular fever and a bad back which meant she wasn't able to sit up in bed or hold a pen: school sent a TA round to take her SATS down to dictation, as dd was in top set so they didn't want to miss her results. I am still trying to work out why we agreed to this to support a school that had done sod all to support dd through several years of disability and chronic pain. Ds is about to sit his SATS, he also has a chronic pain disorder, but I very much doubt that the school will send a TA round if he is off sick on the day, seeing that ds is in bottom set.

I would have more sympathy if the school hadn't lied outright to the children and told them this test was crucial for their future: some of the girls in dd's year were nearly ill with stress. I do not hold with lying and I told dd the truth.

Are you kidding me, i worked my arse off in my yr6 sats i remember it vividly all the pressure and stress... and its all bull.

why on earth would they do that to children.

IN that case YANBU and im

Yanbu, I'm sick of the school gate dribble about them tbh & our children are only y4 & most some parents are paying private tutors for weekend help.

Zukie why were four year olds sitting SATS in Cumbria, surely the earliest they have started was 7?

I also remember being told in both yr6 and yr9 that SATs were important and would effect our future

SATs were originally meant to be about assessing the individual child and what it strengths and weaknesses were in order to get them the help they needed in areas where they may be struggling. They were not meant to be used in league tables.
If children are expected to revise and be coached it completely defeats the point as it does not give a true reflection of what they have actually learned and more importantly understood. This means they may be placed in the wrong stream later on.

The way they are used now means that they are entirely pointless. I for one have never made a big deal of them with regards to my DC.