To think it won't help me or ds to know he's in the bottom 10% of children

[Minifingers]

when he leaves primary? Or my oldest ds to know he's probably in the top 10%?

This is what the government is suggesting - that children are ranked into 10 ability bands when they leave primary.

I know how able or otherwise my children are - I read their school reports, I look at their SATS results, I talk to their teachers.

What will ranking them in this way do other than give them an overwhelming sense of failure or complacency?

individualised teaching is essential but teachers given the time, small enough class numbers etc can know each child.
Instead of spending so much on testing & analysis & data & reports spend it on the kids, the schools, the teachers.

One of the issues some private school parents have is the complete lack of any standardised assessment or way of knowing how children are doing......

partly yes.
I have children at either end of the ability spectrum & testing has no benefit to the child.
Good teaching in small class sizes can have a direct positive impact on the kids & if heads had the time to manage & monitor their staff instead of worrying about endless data & form filling they could monitor & drive up standards anyway.
Give the teachers & the heads better training & allow them to do their job

It is English and maths they are doing, I know that, but my ds came home with a practice paper that his class had done for reading. His punctuation in that practice paper was appalling, yet it had been marked as being a level 5.

When I questioned this with his teacher I was told that this particular paper didn't test for punctuation so it didn't matter if there wasn't a capital letter in sight. I went like this

The teacher even admitted it was ridiculous, but as her job relies on it, she understandably seemed more interested in the fact that it was a level 5 than the fact that it was a terrible piece of writing.

I really don't care whether or not my ds is at the nationally expected level, I just want him to be able to punctuate properly!

As they are never going to get rid of all testing, I think it would be better for tests to focus on a child's ability instead of whether they can identify the right places to put speech marks when they know that's what they're looking for!

completely agree. Most of yr 6 is spent preparing a child to correctly answer questions on a test paper rather than strengthening or expanding on what they know or revisiting areas of weakness.
Teacher assessments are of far more value but the teacher has to have the time to know all of his/her pupils to be able to evaluate effectively.

I haven't got a clue what my 13 yr old got in his yr 6 SATS.. what good has it been to him, what value has it been to HIM? Sounds like much of the same to me.

If this test is introduced and shows (as it will) that privately educated children from well off families disproportionately occupy the top band, should we assume 1) these children are simply more able than the brightest children at state schools or 2) they have better teaching?

That one is for you Clouds - you seem to think that someone can create a test for 11 year olds which can accurately identify exactly how able a child is, a test which is immune to tutoring.

I would interpret that result as showing that a significant proportion of children in the top band got sent to private school.

I wonder how long before they would set a target saying that everyone had to be in the top 50 % ? ....... Just hope Michael Gove isn't a Mumsnetter.

I hope he is mumsnetter, maybe he would listen to sense. I'm sure his advisors are so pissed with power they can only see up their own arse

I'm no NC rookie, as an ex teacher, albeit at secondary level.

My eldest is in Y4, though. He's exceptionally bright. It's obvious, but he has ASD and ADHD and extreme social and emotional difficulties, a history of school refusal and refusal to work at school. Naturally, I've been monitoring him closely.

He had a very hard time with an unsympathetic teacher in Y2, so I helped him acclimatise to the type of tests that the school would use for their internal assessment (he was set to refuse). His teacher and I ended up in absolute agreement that he was at level 2a for reading and writing and 3 for maths (I also used a year 3 optional test which put him at the top end of 3a for maths). It took him a while to recover from his bad Y2 experience and he didn't make a lot of progress in Y3, which was also disrupted by year group changes and several changes of teacher. His Y4 report has made it clear that 3b is the expected average for his year group and told me that he's at 3a for writing, which we all know he hates, 4c for reading, despite his language disorder, and that his limitation there is inference and 4a for maths - which aunty google would tell me is up there with Y6.

He has made phenomenal progress, this year, and I know exactly where because I know his levels and what is keeping him form the next level. I already knew what they were for myself, but his teacher has made it clear where his strengths and weaknesses lie.

It doesn't take any ingenuity to suggest that a bit of transparency would help parents to understand NC levels. A bit like the packed lunch fiasco, this move is suggesting that parents are ignorant and know nuffin'. More parents would know more if politicians didn't simply talk over their heads about how they can't help it, poor little dears and actually took steps to ensure that parents were treated like they might know a bit about their own children and have some concern about their education and welfare.

Cloudsandtrees - the reading paper tests understanding and inference. It makes absolute sense that a child who can't punctuate or spell accurately should not be penalised heavily in that paper, any more than they should if it was a Science paper.

Believe me, I don't think that, we have been through 11+.

To answer your question, I don't think there is much point changing the tests if you wait until they are at the end of Y6 to do them. But I would have thought that a varied test that was designed to assess a child's natural abilities in all areas of the curriculum would show that there are children from all socio economic backgrounds that have all levels of ability.

Privately educated children who you believe would automatically be in the top band only make up 7% of all children, and at primary age very few of them will have had to pass an entrance test, so they aren't automatically going to be naturally brighter. Plenty of primary age children are getting as good an education from the state system and their parents as the privately educated children are.

If and when a child is shown to have an ability or a need for help, from any background, then a test that helps predict their potential could be used to hold their schools accountable for making sure they are pushed in their strengths and supported in their weaknesses.

There has got to be a better way than the bollocks that is SATs.

But schools are already held accountable if children don't make at lease expected progress......

I just don't understand what this proposed test adds.

Cloudsandtress
You need to read up more about what happens in Kent.
When private prep schools advertise "100% 11+ passes"
you know that the kids at the grammars are NOT the brightest, just the most sharp elbowed.

This proposed test will bring that shit down on the heads of everybody who does NOT live in grammar areas.
I LIKE the fact that my town is not full of tutors thankyou

and frankly, school kids are ALREADY pushed in their strengths and supported in their weaknesses : its called teaching
we do not need millions of pounds spent on a political test to tel us the obvious

Ouryve, I disagree when we're talking about the test that children do right at the end of their time at primary school.

i wonder why all this emphasis is placed on primary schools

or why so much is placed on maths

it's crackers imo so what if a kid can do algebra well at aged 11 - it really doesn't prove anything other than maybe he should be an accountant

arts aren't taken into account at all are they?

Why? They're already tested on that in their writing test. It would be unfair on children with dyslexia, dyspraxia or who otherwise struggle with putting pen to paper to be awarded any more than a small penalty for not being able to put pen to paper accurately when they are analysing a text.

DS1 struggles with formulating ideas and coherent sentences and that is reflected in his writing levels. He is better at understanding and analysing something that he reads. Those two tests form part of the battery which make up his overall literacy level and will also do so when he is in year 6.

It's just ridiculous to say, sorry, you can't spell or punctuate, so we don't care whether or not you accurately interpret something that you have read.

Politely disagreeing about maths, hippo. You need at least a basic primary school grasp of maths for more careers than acocuntancy. It would be a useful skill for a few more politicians, too, for starters!

(owning and leaving my typo :o )

I teach graduates for professional exams. We had to stop pinning up mock exam results showing quartile position for students as too many people got upset. We now put up exam results for the class without names - still we have students upset that they are in the fourth quartile even though they understand that a quarter of the class will be there.

These students are 21 plus and it still bothers them - I would not like to be having similar conversations with 11 year olds.

I've had plenty of grammar school conversations on here to have a pretty good idea of how it works in Kent, and I definitely know how it works where I live!

I'm not sure why you're linking it to the 11+ though. It's not going to affect the allocation of a secondary school place, there is no reason why people would go any more crazy with tutoring than they do for SATs.

I know that teachers are already well aware of the capabilities of the children they teach, but I don't think there is anything worse than we already have about a test that can be referred to at the end of a child's state education to show that a child has achieved something in the areas that they have formally shown themselves to be strong in.

but what is the POINT of the test ?

I no longer mention anything below my degree in my CV
my O levels and A levels are irrelevant.

Once kids have GCSEs, who gives a stuff what score they got at 11

Children with dyslexia or dyspraxia have a significant recognised difficulty, they do not need to be assessed in exactly the same way as children who do not have those difficulties. The children that have no real reason not to be able to punctuate properly should be doing so!