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.

Purple I'm gobsmacked that there is no differentiation of assessment for children with learning difficulties - that is absolutely bonkers on every level.

DD is still ok but will be interested to see how today goes. She's confident with spellings but not so much on the grammar.

I haven't pushed her at home really. Tbh I might have made more effort but simply haven't had time. School provided them all with a set of mock SATs booklets to work through in their own time and I've just let her get on with it. She's definitely put some work in at home but I don't know how much. She declined the option of 'Easter school' and SATs breakfasts this week.

The school don't seem to have been too pushy with them. They've been spending every morning working on SATs prep but still done PE, art and topic work in the afternoons (interestingly they learnt about extinct birds last week...)

I am just off to exercise my own creative writing skills and send an email to get her out of the designated sports fest that's taking place every day this week!

Use Young's Modulus for Linear Expansion to determine whether any could have been semi-colons.

Reminds me of Mr J Evans Pritchard's equations for poetry analysis in Dead Poets Society....and not in a good way .

I've left all the prep to the school also, although I now regret not getting more involved. The problem for me is that I was never taught English grammar at school, so I'm pretty clueless.

However, this morning, when I woke Ds up for school, I couldn't help saying 'If I were you, I'd get up for school now (subjunctive)'. I hope that was the subjunctive!

The problem for me is that I was never taught English grammar at school, so I'm pretty clueless Even if you had been taught English grammar at school it wouldn't have helped you. The terminology now is bonkers.

I keep reminding DD that I managed to obtain a post-graduate diploma in journalism without every having heard of a fronted adverbial, so it really can't be that important!

Shipwrecked Thanks for that...good to have some light relief! I also like Michael Rosen's 'press release'....

"For our Reading comprehension test today, we at Top Standards in Examining Everyone All the Time, have ensured that only really feeble, dull, poorly written passages were put in front of children, ideally on subjects that interest very, very, very few children. We tried to ask them the kinds of questions that they themselves would never ask, and tried to narrow these down to ones that only have right and wrong answers. This removed any possibility that the children got the impression that writing and reading are about interesting nuances of meaning, some of which change and shift in a book. We were also on the look out for passages where children of a particular kind of background brought their knowledge to bear on the passage so that really we were testing their parents' level of education, not the children's. Ultimately, we hope that these tests will ensure that a school which is not an academy becomes one. Good night. "

I came in here expecting to see something that I could have done at the age of 6 or something like it always is when they brand an English test ridiculously hard but that is mental. That looks like something I would have had in GCSEs. I had to read some of the questions 3 or 4 times before I worked out what it was asking me. Is number 3 even correct English itself?

Ava that makes me feel a lot better. Will tell Ds!

ds and all his friends said it was hard, not many in the year finished all the questions. ds's school is stressed about it all but they've done a fab job shielding the kids from it, they're all going in early, at 8am this week and having a cooked breakfast each morning, in fact its the breakfast the kids are talking about more than the tests, scrambled egg on toast today.

i too have never heard of or knowingly used a fronted adverbial, and i'm a published author!

DS said that he found the test 'a little difficult' but not worse than the 11+ test.

The school have been really good in not letting them get stressed about it. I have told DS to do his best and not to worry as his high school doesn't care about these results. Thankfully his high school said because of the uncertainty, they will be assessing kids in the first six weeks of school before they put them into ability sets.

We have done some prep over the Easter holidays and a bit on the weekends - but nothing over the top -about 30-1 hour minutes two or three times a week. DH did the maths and I did the Literacy. I know my grammar very well (I studied English at Uni) and I am surprised by the depth of grammar questions about participles and conjunctives etc. I learned this stuff in Sixth form - not in Primary school!!

Before people start feeling guilty about not doing extra prep - I don't think the extra prep really helped that much - it was all about making DS feel confident.

Sorry, but has anyone explained what a frontal adverbial is?

I learnt gammar at a private prep school, 50 odd years ago, and have no recollection of that phrase.

I do know that no one was bothered about split infinitives, hence "to boldly go" sounded pretty OK, while "to go boldly" was a bit of a wince-provoker. I remember my dad (classical education at good public school from 1922 - c. 1935) having a bit of a laugh with it.

Boaty - it's an adverb or adverbial clause that starts a sentence: "happily, she strolled in the sun". Not sure why this is a particularly desirable way to write (and in fact I actively remember being told it was "weak" to start a sentence with "suddenly" - which would be a fronted adverbial - but my DS has started writing formulaic, bad English that ticks boxes rather than well-crafted stylish English. It is very depressing.

If I am repeating anything, forgive me, I do not have time to read whole thread.

It is widely believed that this test was set to be very difficult to make it look like many schools are failing. This then makes the argument for Academies more compelling.

Parents beating themselves up for not spending more time revising with their dc shouldn't. DC should be spending more time outside rather than learning about fronted abverbials!!

Reading these reports I am so glad I took my kids off to Scotland.

I am glad to read that lots of your children have been shielded from the stress of these tests, I am furious with our school, they have piled so much pressure on the kids. They have been told lots of schools are having fun breaks between tests, but 'not you lot', imagine actually telling 10 & 11 year old that their peers are having water fights and games but they can't. One child had an accident and needed urgent medical treatment, the parents got a real earful about how they had let the school down, I have endured tears and stress from my child all week which has been exhausting for the whole family and totally needless. These kids still take teddies to bed for Christ's sake. Our form teacher has managed to put my child off reading totally with her sarcasm. At the weekend I am putting a veto on tech and gadgets, and if the weather is Ok we will go out so dd can run around and climb trees, let off some steam and be a kid.

When do schools get the results back for these tests?

Grumpy that is just appalling .

data I believe it's late June/early July so quite a wait.

I absolutely refused to even talk about SATS or homework at the weekend - we had a walk along the beach, went to the pictures and out for lunch and spent Sunday afternoon in the neighbour's garden playing with her new puppy .

Hoping the weather is good on Friday as DD and her mates are planning a get together in the park with dinner from the local chippy .

Grumpy your school sounds bloody awful. Sometimes I think ours is almost a bit too laid back about everything. However, I think we've actually been very fortunate with the school's relaxed approach to SATs. No extra SATs stuff at all and minimal homework. Our HT has 2 Dc and doesn't believe in stressing kids or her staff out and I'm beginning to respect her more and more for this attitude.

I probably did too much with Ds at the weekend in an attempt to avoid anything SATs related. We spent the whole weekend outside enjoying the beautiful weather. Ds has ever had so much fresh air! He was totally knackered on Monday morning but I thought he'd be OK as reading has always been his strong point! Little did I know....

If the tests are a real mess - the results might be "delayed", I think they were for one of my DC - the results here barely arrived before the end of the summer term and for some schools hadn't even arrived then.

The thing I am most angry about is my daughter now feels she is 'thick' and I am scared she will continue to believe this and switch off from learning, I am not the only parent to have this worry from our school, right now I am not sure what to do with my anger towards the form tutors, I need to take a step back for now. I have shown her the news, the One show last night, the links about SATs and tried to reassure her, just hope it works. I can't let an 11 year old write herself off because of these incredibly difficult tests and worse, the attitude of her teachers, they are still so suggestible at this age, and still believe the teachers know 'everything', it's a hard balance to support the teacher while gently suggesting that actually Mum knows a few things too.

Ava Thankyou for replying with that info.

I'm slightly past this as both DS are now in secondary, but I'll offer my words of wisdom with the benefit of hind-sight.

I really think that parents' and schools' attitudes can hugely affect the children; we were lucky enough that our school encouraged and supported the kids, told them that the tests were important but that they were to just do their best, gave them lots of toast (recognised that some are from homes where they wouldn't have had breakfast) and extra play time and chances to run off steam. The teachers and support staff were clearly working really hard to get the children prepared but not to heap stress on them - both mine (one more academic, one borderline ADHD so a dreamer and very active) seemed to take them in their stride and both did okay. They worried a bit and spoke about being nervous, but I do think children by Y6 need exposure to things they will encounter in the real world; we cannot keep them bubble wrapped and hope that society will suddenly become really quite nice and look after them and their feelings in to adulthood.

I stressed to them that they were to do their very best and whatever they achieved would be brilliant and we would be proud.

I think a lot of the stress problems on the children this year are from seeing their parents worrying and seeing reports in the media, which just exacerbates their nerves and can blow things right up.

I know that some children are far more sensitive and that the above is a generalisation, but I think if everybody was able to calm down about the whole shebang then the children would be far less stressed. At the end of the day, it's a test and as other PP have already said is really for the school not the children. When mine went up to secondary the teachers said they don't really take the SATS results in to consideration for streaming; they spend the first couple of weeks testing the children and forming their own conclusions on their abilities.

I fully understand all the comments about the tests being too hard and that they should be more targeted to individual levels, but if they have to just be one or two tests rather than tailored, then surely it's better to work to the highest common denominator rather than bring everyone down to the lowest level, or this will leave the brighter students unchallenged. In an ideal world, tailoring would be wonderful though, and the intuitive computer testing model would be a fantastic leap in enabling our children to gain confidence in their own abilities.

WTAF is going on with our "education" system?

The decision to HE never looked so favourable.

How the hell is any child under the age of 14 spending any time WHATSOEVER worrying about assessment?

How did this go so wrong?

The idea we should expose children to unnecessary stress so as to prepare them for the adult world is cast iron 100% bullshit.

Being stressed doesn't help you deal with future stress...it makes it worse!

Children need to be children and to learn in an unstressed environment for as long as possible.

If I was designing a Reading Comprehension Test, the first thing I'd do was make sure it WASN'T in a familiar format. Then you'd have to actually READ it, and COMPREHEND what was required.