To think the Yr 6 Reading Comprehension Test today was far too difficult?

[Lottielo]

Ds just home from school and very upset because he found the reading comprehension paper much harder than previous sample papers he has done in school. He didn't even finish the paper (missed out 5 questions).

Was this paper harder than expected or was my Ds not properly prepared by his school? I know it shouldn't matter too much, but I'm worried it could knock his confidence.

Seemingly not Rat I don't understand why my 7yo is being separated from his peers this week but aparently he has to do them

Yes, exactly Lottielo. I can't blame them for wanting to zone out. It is a chore.

You want the animal to get faster/ leaner/ fatter - delete as appropriate for whatever competition.

There is so much less room now for enquiry, creativity, something-for-something's sake. And yet we are blithely informed we should not be teaching to the test.

Do you all know about progress 8?About the core subjects being double weighted? About the new 1-9 GCSE levels? Do you know that actually your child's KS2 data is being used to determine how they should perform at the end of year 11 - seven years later?

Never mind all the up and downs and steps and blips beteen then - linear, consistent progress, or else!

Sorry I meant to add above:

You want the animal to get faster/ leaner/ fatter - delete as appropriate for whatever competition. Apparently you just weigh or measure or time it more so you get more data.

Sorry, only read the first couple of posts.

My ds found it hard too, and he was very cross about it all. There have been tears this morning and he is still awake now as he has worked himself up.

Not sure what to do with him, apart from love and reassurance, I hope your ds is ok.

Forgot to add that ds is angry that they spent the rest of the day doing more practice papers, and he misses PE and art. They've been knocked on the head the last couple of weeks all for practice papers.

My son has come home happy as Larry.
Said they got to have a water fight and play football on the field after. He wishes all school days were the same!
Hope the rest of the week is as good!
I don't get the fuss about sats, I can remember taking them myself and they aren't a big deal, they had no impact on the rest of my education.

My son struggled with it but said this was more because he really needed a poo! We're not even going to open the results envelope-how many CVs do you see with Year 6 SATS on them? We don't give a monkeys in our house-plenty of time for studying at secondary school but for now it's quite warm and there are water fights to be had!

Just looked at the medias response. Comments on DM article are disgusting considering most posting obviously have no clue how things have changed this year. Fucking vile!

My dd had no complaint about it and said it was fine, but she has issues really understanding inference and I thought the comprehension part would be the one that troubled her but it may have gone right over her head completely. Either way, thankfully she didn't have a bad day with it. But I don't agree with all the pressure on them. Her school has been coercing them to come in and hour early every day since easter and even during the holidays for booster classes!

www.theguardian.com/education/2016/may/10/fresh-humiliation-as-sats-answers-published-online-for-second-time?CMP=twt_gu

It would be wonderful if today's SPAG test was scraped immediately ....

Fingers crossed!

may I ask how many SATs are there ? as in one after Y6, another I guess after Y11 and one more after Y13 !! sorry for my ignorance but my child is young so I don't know all this. What all good preparing material available for Y6 SAT ?

Mrsz I just came on to share that article after reading this thread last night. Here's hoping for all of you with kids due to sit that test today that it is cancelled. Shameful government & complete waste of teachers & kids time.

Don't prepare your child for SATs - leave that to the school.

Sometimes it can be disadvantageous to help a child overachieve at SATs. My DS got a level 3 and automatically got extra help at secondary school, if he'd just scrapped a 4 he would have got none of that help.

There are only SATs at year 2 and year 6; there used to be ones at year 9 but they were scrapped several years ago. At the end of year 11 students sit GCSEs - which do matter and are external qualifications. At the end of year 13 students sit A'levels (often).

I asked my DS and he said "it was ok" his friend said "it was really hard" so I suppose we'll just have to wait and see. I don't like to push him too much and go over it all again as it's done and finished and he can't change anything now.

My DS was starting to get stressed at one point but I've talked him down. I've explained that yes they are important and yes it's crap that they've been changed so much but unfortunately he has to do them. I've also been teaching him some yoga techniques which he seems to be loving so we're going to do that just before he goes to bed.

Once they're out of the way he's on easy street until they break up in July.

Jesus wept Mrz
You really couldn't make this up

The SPAG test is one of my real bug bears. I work with children with significant language delay. I have always taught grammar at a functional level - rules to help them remember simple things like when to use a plural s ( because they can't physically hear that sound) when an auxiliary verb is needed ( is, am are) why ed is added to regular verbs in the past tense ( again because they can't hear it and it's too fleeting on the lips to be lip read) that all sentences need a verb etc.

I now have to spend so much time getting them to recognise ridiculously complex terms that there isn't enough time for the stuff that really matters. OFSTED are not interested in the fact that we have three statemented pupils like this in our current year 6 so our data will be significantly affected if they don't make the grade meaning an inspection will be triggered. Strange thing is I can teach them to jump through these hoops. So it looks like I am doing a good job but they still can't write grammatically.

It's just such a joke...

Just unbelievable.

Oh and my DCs school was one where the students scored highly on SATs, but actually enjoyed SATs week.
They would start the day with "mind stretches" and a banana. Then sit the SAT. Then have extra play time, and lots of fun craft/art/sports stuff (especially including lots of cooking). It was also a school which didn't run after school or holiday revision sessions, or send lots of SATs papers home. I did receive a few for my youngest, but that was only because she was sitting some level 6 ones.

DD has got ready for school, she's looking very morose and has just grabbed her crumpled uniform from yesterday and put that on rather than a fresh set, she says she doesn't care what she looks like at school this week. DS asked her what was up and she hunched her shoulders, stared at the floor and said 'oh, I'm just soooo excited to go to school today. NOT' and rolled her eyes.
She's now ready and watching TV before school - she can do whatever she likes this week if she finds it helpful. She saw about the test being published online and was furious "so some people will have cheated then as their parents will have shown them the spellings" - I have reassured her that most parents won't have seen it and that most parents will not show their children.

is this paper available somewhere ? I would like to have a look

The spelling answers were published on a closed forum for exam markers not the open internet. It is unlikely to be cancelled.

How I wish they would cancel the test today (and the rest of them this week), but given that the test was only released to the markers, I doubt that will happen. However, it is still really unfair considering that many of the markers will be teaching Yr6.

Ds still asleep I think. He was awake until very late last night, so I'll let him have a lie in.

Do Yr6 take science SATs at any point?

Blankpiece your point about SATs results being used for Progress 8 grade predictions is what really concerns me about these SATs. Until now, our secondary school hasn't paid much attention to the results, but now they will be used by schools to set targets for Yr11. So if a child underperforms this week, then their targets grades will be set too low and they might never reach their full potential. In our state secondary, the school aims for the target and no more. Time and resources are directed to the borderline students. A child with a grade C target who is really capable of an A, will never be pushed to achieve this in our school. It really angers me that a progression is seen to be purely linear when from what I can see, many Dc can really fly when they get to secondary school.

DD doing SATs this week. We have done no prep at home, I have left that to the school.

She said the test yesterday was ok. However fwiw, I have been teaching grammar (am an EFL/ESOL teacher) to a fairly high level for over 20 years and I was stumped by a couple of questions I was shown on line a few weeks ago.

Yesterday's paper cannot be published until all students have had a chance to sit it. But here is Michael Rosen's parody of it:

Nicky was a lovely girl who sparkled wheresoever she went. Her best friend was Nick who knew a lot about everything, like an encyclopedia at the bottom of our garden. One day they went on a safari trip to the moon where they went for a ride on the kind of thing that nice people go for rides on on the moon. In Tasmania there used to be an animal called the Tasmanian Devil, which died out thanks to human predation. Nicky and Nick are extremely able and clever people who are ultimately responsible for everything that goes on in schools. You are grateful. In a minute you will have some questions. Some of you won't be able to answer them. That's good because this means Nicky and Nick can turn you into an academy with their magic wands. You like academies and you want all schools to be academies, notwithstanding other circumstantial evidence.

1. 'Human predation' means:

a) Human deprivation b) Human impregnation c) Human infestation d) Human redaction Tick one, or die.

1. What does the word 'sparkled' mean?

Write 23 meanings in the space below.

1. How many times has your father spoken to you about Tasmanian Devils? If none, proceed to the room marked 'unworthy'.
2. Do you have an encyclopedia at the bottom of your garden? If you don't have a garden, ask your parents why not.
3. Do you like Nicky and Nick? Tick 'yes'.
4. The word 'notwithstanding' doesn't mean 'not with standing'. English: funny old language, eh? But not for you.
5. Give four sentences which explain what this brilliant piece of writing is about.
6. Explain why the people who wrote this test are anonymous.
7. We're finding it rather hard to think of another question but we have to or Nicky and Nick won't give us another one of these very lucrative contracts. Can you think of a question? No, don't answer that one, because we won't be able to put it through a computer.

10. Ah yes, we forgot the sequence one that Michael Gove said was important. Put the following into the correct sequence: Nicky. Notwithstanding Nick. Tasmanian Devil Encylopedia 11. The word 'sparkled' is metaphorical hyperbolic elliptical sparkly Tick one. 12. Count the full stops. Divide by 3. Take away the number you first thought of. Use Young's Modulus for Linear Expansion to determine whether any could have been semi-colons. 13. Did you arrive in this country to live any time in the last 2 years? Do you think this test takes into consideration any of the incredible advances you have made in learning to speak, write, read and understand English? If your answers to these two questions are yes and no, we have at least achieved something. 14. If you have got to the end of the test, please sit quietly looking at the clock. Do not avert your gaze. 15. Avert means: a small creature called a vert a big creature called a vert a green creature called a vert a word meaning, may the heavens open and take me away from this rubbish