AIBU to think our kids have been set up to fail?

[theluckiest]

There are heated conversations in Education about this but I really feel everyone should know what's happening - I have only been teaching primary for 5 years. However, for most of that I have taught Year Six. This week I came close to quitting a job I love and think I'm good at. This isn't about pay or conditions. This is about a system designed to make kids fail - the new 'expectations' for an 11 year old will ensure that most children this year will simply not reach them. They will be judged as 'working towards' ie. not good enough. AIBU to think this is going to be a national scandal this year?!! If your kids are in Y6, I am so so sorry. Sorry that they have been set up to fail, sorry that their lovely rich curriculum will be abandoned for a diet of SATS drilling and sorry that concerns for children's mental health have gone through the roof. This is happening right now people - in your kids' schools. AIBU to think something just has to give?!!!https://m.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tes.com%2Fnews%2Fschool-news%2Fbreaking-views%2Fdear-nicky-morgan-a-talented-and-demand-teacher-has-resigned-she&sid=0&appid=966242223397117&referrer=sociallplugin&rdr

Yanbu at all, it is extremely high. I recently did one of those Mock Mini SATS online, I scored very low. I have a BA (Hon.) and a Msc. How on earth can they expect the average primary child to pass. I would expect those types of questions within an English degree.

Children do not pas or fail SATs because they have no impact on their future - it only matters to teachers.
Tell the children the results are unimportant, don't spend weeks cramming and the children will not suffer. If all schools did this, then comparative performance would be unchanged.
Teachers do only care about their own career and progression/pay, and the may be justified in complaining bout it, but don't pretend it matters a jot to the children.
Changes in GCSE's with insufficient time is important to children, but much less discussed here.

Carol, love, last sentence apart, you are talking nonsense

My daughter is in year 6, she has come home this week after sitting numerous tests and is devastated that she didn't do as well as she had hoped. I have told her to just try her best. I feel so sorry for her.

The plain English society needs to be involved in writing the English SATS.

The Key stage2 SATS I am referring to.

ah, academies are directly funded by the government and thus local authority funding/running is removed. Means they have to comply directly with government rulings for funding. That's why the gov want them all to e academies.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13274090

'Teaching unions say "academisation", as it is known, is a way of privatising the school system, because private providers run large "chains" of schools and the structure sidesteps the influence of the local authority.'

As usual our children are guinea pigs for whatever "great" idea the government has come up with.

I really resent those posters saying that teachers only care about their performance targets and related pay. All the teachers I know (I worked in a school till last year) care very much about their pupils, and are fuming about these new SATs.

My DS is y4 and already below ARE in everything except reading. His writing is awful - he has additional needs, I dread to think what mark he would get if his handwriting isn't good enough by y6.

And I've read that the "failures" will have to retake in y7, either from this year or next. Saying to the children that it isn't important won't make them feel that if they have to do them again the following year, while their friends may not have to.

I'm seriously considering pulling DS out and HEing him to avoid the distress the SATs would cause him.

By this age, myself and other good readers in class were reading adult books that our parents thought were appropriate. Because the books aimed at children of this age were often too basic.

There has been clear grade inflation. And it is clear that the level of English and Maths has fallen. So expectations have to be higher.

I am also raging about the lowest score in any of the tests determining the child's level. If you have a child who struggles with grammar yet is amazing at maths then they will probably be working towards the levels.

It's been rushed in because they have to be seen to be doing something and they are determined to have all schools as academies making money for their mates.

There's going to be an absolute fortune saved on teachers' wages over the coming years as none of us will be able to show our students have all made appropriate progress, thus making it perfectly 'reasonable' to stop teachers from moving up the pay scale.

So those who are against this, what do you suggest? How should standards be improved?

Cleaty,

Yes, I also was reading Jane Eyre and Austen and Watership Down and Vanity Fair at that age - because there was nothing genuinely engaging for able young adult readers when I was a child. Which is why I am so delighted that that particular hole has been so well-filled, by a whole range of excellent modern authors for children and young adults, keeping a whole load of children as reader who would otherwise stop.

The point I was making is that real writers, both for adults and children,. don't write like 10-11 year olds are supposed to in order to reach 'age related expectations'. And that is wrong.

(Have you looked at the expectations? Did you write like that as a 10 year old? Remember that all samples have to be completed by May, so with them being completed throughout Y6, most children will have done most of the writing either before, or very shortly after, their 11th birthday. A quarter of the year group won't have turned 11 until after the whole SATs affair is completed)

MrsPnut is that because they don't stream children, so are looking for some kind of "aggregate" score? It seems ridiculous not to accept that everyone has different strengths, and that one child might be outstanding at maths but not so great at English, say

Cleaty,

IMO, the standards at the end of primary have actually improved, on average, from when I was a child - especially given that many of the children now included in primary classrooms were simply not in mainstream schools in those days.

However, I am also of the era of O-levels and CSEs, of a very small % of pupils going to university etc. So the standards of those who e.g. got As at O-level were probably higher, but the AVERAGE standard was much lower, because there was an acceptance that a very large % of 15-16 year olds either went straight into a job or had very few, low grade qualifications - that expectation has gone.

Equally hose saying that the standard of undergraduates has declined should consider the 40%ish of the cohort who simply would never have gone to university in the past - it genuinely isn't valid to compare an 'average' undergraduate today, one of the top 50%, with the average undergraduate in the past, when it was the top 10%

The Maths I did in Year 6, btw, was laughably easier than is now taught in Y6 - and I was very able, top of my class, skipped Y7 and went straight into the top set of a highly selective girls' independent.

teacher I actually disagree with the idea that children should be pushed to more complex texts in order to enable them to meet the requirements of the KS levels - sorry if that wasn't clear.

I was put off reading Dickens for over 20 years because I started on it far too young - I was capable of reading it at 10, but not of really enjoying it: and I think this is a huge danger if we push children towards reading classics etc just because they can. It's much better that they are engaged and enthusiastic in their reading - plus, as you say, very little of fiction written for adults today is actually as grammatically/structurally advanced as is expected of primary school children.

Unlike Aeroflot, I didn't personally find the mini-mocks difficult, as a 41 year old woman - but I suspect, despite being a passionate reader and writer at 10, I would have found them trickier then: a lot of the types of questions they were asking were things we did in preparation for moving school at 13. I realise, though, from talking to contemporaries, that my first school was relatively old-fashioned when it came to grammar - from memory, we had at least an hour a week that was just punctuation and grammar, and the parsing of sentences, identifying all the parts of speech and sub-clauses blah blah blah. We also continued to study grammar at secondary school, up to GCSE, but this was just reaffirming the knowledge we had already - in those early days, though, there was a grammar chunk on the English Language paper: not sure if that's still the case though.

In 1992, 42% of people was the Labour government's target for people to participate in HE: so not massively different to today's figures, which are around 51-2% - so there will be a little bit of impact on increased numbersover the last 20 years, but not a massive one. And university degrees have always been awarded on an "absolute" score, rather than an average one - so unless the population has become absolutely more clever, there isn't a convincing reason why the numbers of firsts, in particular, has rocketed over the last 10-ish years. Unlike, say, A levels, the grade needed for a degree class doesn't depend on the cohort's performance that year.

I would suggest raising the bar in early years initially...so the more able are stretched in Reception, while there is still play based learning (and have more play based learning in Y1) and follow it though so when those children reach Y6, they will have been taught what they need to know for Y6 .

How will secondaries me able to predict GCSE grades with out the old levels in place? What will secondaries be able to do with the new style SATs results?

SATS. are irrelevant to children and parents. They mean nothing at all for secondary, they are not needed for CVs, they are meaningless. We should all be reinforcing this message. We adopt an air of disinterest when the topic comes up. One cannot fail something no-one cares about. I wish school would shut up about them.

Of course I recognise they are massively significant to the teacher and school.

DD is year 6, fairly able child. They are not doing much else other than sats practice. It is a shame and I agree the standards are ridiculous. Children are put into a "not up to standard" box so easily. They all tend to know it too.

I's a TA at secondary school and they retest the children frequently and standards seem to be more reasonable for the year7s I work with (mostly middle and lower ability). I am letting that knowledge comfort me. All the year 6s will be in the same boat so it will be smoothed out in year 7.

Penguin, I wish it were so.

For instance, my friend's DD was looking for a Y11 work experience placement, and the application included disclosing her predicted GCSE grades, which were, you guessed it, based on her SATs.

A pupil's GCSE "track" can now determined by their SATs. Late bloomers are screwed.

Most teachers I know would rather be teaching the whole child to love learning than drilling them in technical terms for the parts of speech.

GCSEs will be no more by the time our Y6s are there. The predicted grade thing is so stupid hopefully that will be long gone too. Nothing is insurmountable. After all, it is the actual public exam performance that matters in the long run.

I think we would do our DCs a big favour by calming down. A lot.