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?

Please will somebody tell me what this test will do that SATS don't?

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

Maybe parents who look at their child's GCSE results and wishes someone had noticed a particular child's talents or weaknesses before they started GCSE's.

Maybe me in five years time when I wonder why my child has got a crap English GCSE grade after he was given great English test results at the end of primary school.

Are you saying SATS and teacher assessments at the end of primary are pointless? That a test will tell you more than a teacher who has been teaching and assessing a child for a whole year?

If this is what you're saying then a lack of testing is not the problem - the quality of teaching and assessment throughout the year is. A test won't compensate for poor teaching.

Are you saying SATS and teacher assessments at the end of primary are pointless? That a test will tell you more than a teacher who has been teaching and assessing a child for a whole year?

If this is what you're saying then a lack of testing is not the problem - the quality of teaching and assessment throughout the year is. A test won't compensate for poor teaching.

But clouds, many children with dyslexia and dyspraxia aren't recognised as such and why shouldn't they be tested on their reading comprehension, if they can access the test. Are you suggesting that children with dyslexia or dyspraxia, or children like DS1, with a communication disorder shouldn't be subject to expectations at all? Putting a coherent, grammatically correct sentence on a piece of paper is difficult or impossible for them, so let's just pat them on the head and tell them they needn't worry about how well they can understand what they read (or hear) because they're obviously too "thick"?

I agree that it's pointless to compare them against the rest of their year group, nationally, so how do you propose that their progress is measured under a system where all that matters is a single national ranking when they are 10 or 11? I agree that putting DS2 in for year 2 tests would have been an exercise in folly, since he can barely even talk, but are you suggesting that DS1's own communication disorder means we should otherwise forget about him, academically, no matter how intelligent he actually is?

^Are you saying SATS and teacher assessments at the end of primary are pointless?*

No.

I'm saying SATs are a crap system. I'm not saying that teacher assessments are pointless. That would be silly.

So improve SATS.

I've no problems with children being tested and assessed. I do have a massive problem with them being ranked nationally.

You keep ignoring the issue of national ranking and banging on about the importance of accurate assessment. Nobody has a problem with children's performance being assessed and parents given feedback. But why do children need to be RANKED in the way the government is suggesting?

Why do children "need to be ranked"? Because in lots of areas of life, relative position does matter.

Want one of 30 spaces on a particular university course? Better be in the top 30 of all the applicants for the course. Want a job? Better be the best candidate who applies.

Just a thought.

Please will somebody tell me what this test will do that SATs don't?

I don't see how ranking them is vastly different to what we have, but SATs test where they are now, a different type of test could assess their potential.

I think that's an important thing to know, especially as I don't think SATs are accurate.

Personally, I'd prefer to know where my child is at in relation to all the other children his own age, rather than against just the ones he happens to be in a class with.

So look at the national statistics. Simple.

I don't understand why you think that SATs are inaccurate- or why, if you do, you think this new test will be more accurate.

I think SATs are inaccurate because in my experience the level reached in testing is often not the same as the teachers assessment level. The levels seem to me to be too broad.

I don't know if a new test would be much different, but I can hope!

"Hope" and "belief" (a la Gove and ID-S)
are NOT sound reasons on which to base education policy that will cost millions of pounds and affect millions of children

where is the evidence that such a system would work?
if there is no evidence, commission some research
but do not go off half cocked
without a THOROUGH understanding of what is going on at the moment
and empirical evidence of what the likely outcomes and costs of the change will be

EVIDENCE
EVIDENCE
EVIDENCE

Clouds - so what's a more accurate measure of ability, work done repeatedly over a period of time in a non-controlled setting , or work done once under test conditions? Everyone knows that some children perform better in tests than in non-controlled situations. Are you suggesting that the only true measure of ability is formal testing under controlled conditions? Because that's what your posts seem to say. I don't agree.

Some children perform very well in tests but are incapable of sustaining effort over a longer period of time, or finishing work without an enforced deadline. Why is a single performance under test conditions considered a better and more accurate measure of innate ability than the assessment of a child's ability by an experienced teacher over the course of a year?

You seem to have this fantasy that someone can devise a single test which will accurately measure a child's intelligence and potential. They can't. And therefore ranking children's ability on the basis of a single test and then using this ranking to influence decisions about their secondary education is pretty dangerous don't you think?

Will this magical test take account of the fact that some children - born in September - will be nearly 12 ~ while others born at the end of August will be only just 11 ?

It is cruel. End of.

Kids know where they are roughly. They are not stupid. Teachers know where they are. Parents are told in reports whether their child is above where they are expected to be / where that are expected to be / below where they are expected, so they are already banded into 33.3% bands. In fact, that is divided even further, by saying just above or just below.

Why demoralise kids even more? It will have the oposite effect to what is desired, in a lot of cases. Why bother trying, if you are already so crap?

Madness, just madness.

It's up to the secondary schools to band the children as they think fit not up to primary schools to tell them. Which is why schools do CAT tests in the summer term before the pupils start. It's nothing to do with anyone else and this sort of extra labelling of pupils is quite unneccesary.