To think we need to get a grip about SATs and stop the drama

[PeaceLoveGonk]

DD(11) has to work very hard just to be average academically. None of this SPAG bollocks comes naturally but she just bloody well gets on with it.

She came out of school yesterday, said test was hard, she didn't finish it but did her best. We then went for ice cream and when we got home she went on the iPad.

No one in her class had hysterics, went into meltdown, cried or did anything other than try their best.

I've read a thread on TES forum describing the test as 'brutal' and there is much talk about ruining our children's lives. I think it's just 4 tense days before they start the wind down to summer.

We're not doing our kids any favours with all this anger, breast beating and angst. They're not working in clothing factories in India, trying to make a living from a rubbish dump or facing death on a dinghy trying to cross the sea to escape persecution. It's 4 days of tests!

Not all schools are doing such a good job of minimising the pressure on their children.

^^ This is what I was trying to say but didn't manage it.

If DD was still at DS1 school I would probably be saying the same as some other posters, "It's fine, no stress" But she isn't. My DD has been through hell the last 3 years at home, had to move school 3 months ago due to us being homeless and then getting a house. I met with the Headmaster. First thing he said to me? " She has to put everything else out of her head and hit the ground running because of SATs, they are all that matter right now" I wish to fuck I hadn't had to move her.

Why hasn't every single school said "these tests are new, we are guinea pigs. We are not going to worry about your results and neither should you".

Again, yes to this ^^ This was the attitude of DS1 school. Even if they weren't new. Even if they were worried. They didn't transfer that worry to the children.

givepeaseachance

Please qualify what you mean by resilience?

My son has bucketfuls of resilience. He has Cerebral Palsy and can out-resilient anyone.

He will however struggle enormously with these new SATs. How are they going to measure his levels of resilience exactly, and/or prove that he has none?

There seem a lot of people on this thread that say they have not pressured their dcs yet have had "hundreds" of conversations about them.

I am not exaggerating to say that I have spoken to ds2 perhaps three times about these SATs and only remembered they were yesterday because we bumped into a teacher on Sunday.

I think people have to be honest and admit they do place importance and judgement on them if they are talking about them all the time. And also, if some people on here are honest with themselves, they will be upset if their dc don't get outstanding results.

You either give a shit or you don't.

I know that SATs will never define my ds as does he, hence no drama.

I applaud the teachers and HTs out there who are doing their best to get the message out there about how wrong this new system is.

My two teenagers have done their SATs in recent years and it was nothing like the set-up that we have now. They were only tested on things that they had actually been taught, and their teachers had at least a rough idea of what might come up in the tests and how those tests would be marked.

My DD is in Yr5 and they are still trying to play catch-up with the new curriculum. Even I can see how stressed her teachers are by it all. This isn't fair on any of them.

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A lot of the kids who found it 'fine' will be blissfully unaware they have entirely missed the point.

YABU, the whole thing is a farce. Agree with PP that it's not just the tests it's the huge amount of preparation which as well as putting huge pressure on the children also takes up a lot of time where they could arguably be learning much more interesting and useful stuff which will keep their love of learning alive. It's a waste.

Like the grammar test for example - I'm not at all against learning grammar of course, but it's just getting silly. I've spoken to various teachers/TAs who have all noticed that since the demands of the curriculum have increased, writing has in the main gone downhill. The children are so focused on putting in all the required modal verbs, tenses, connectives etc that their supposedly 'creative' writing becomes formulaic and has no heart or individuality. It's sad. And pointless - if you study creative writing at a higher level, according to my DD's poetry teacher, they tell you "Forget everything you learned about creative writing at school. It was all rubbish."

Obviously there is a variation of how well the schools handle it (I loved the photo going round on FB where a teacher had set revision homework of watching telly, playing outside etc).

Sunny good grief what an uncaring remark from the HT!

But children are also different. Maybe your son hasn't wanted to talk about the SATs.

Other children probably have. Especially if their school is the sort that is putting pressure on them

What I find shocking is the lack of imagination some people seem to have for other people's situations.

Not all children are the same. Not all the schools are the same etc

If you are blessed to have an able child who breezed through things then that's great for you. Just please try to have an awareness that we're not all in the same boat.

It's a poor test if it's mainly testing resilience and ability to "game" the test.

Yesterday someone posted on here that her (obviously bright and clear-thinking) daughter thought she had picked up marks tactically by not even bothering to read the third passage before answering the questions. That's in a reading comprehension test. This girl will go far, but not necessarily because her reading comprehension is superior!

And in FB I saw teachers discussing whether it was OK to advise children to just randomly tick the same answer in each multiple choice question (as this may be the best tactic if you don't know the answers).

Tests for 10/11 year olds really shouldn't be testing exam technique/ ability to game the test!

Sadly, Year 6 is very pressurised for both children and teachers and has become a year of cramming for the SATs. Some children take the whole process to heart and become extremely anxious and stressed. In some schools the pressure is immense and the children are acutely aware of what level they are and what level they need to be. It's not uncommon for afternoon lessons such as art and music to be scrapped for extra SATs practice. I've seen children cry from frustration because they've been pulled out of their PE lesson yet again for extra small-group Maths prep with a TA because they're 'borderline' and need to get their grade up by May.

I'm glad that your DD has been able to brush this pressure off but for some children it's very difficult because they feel like failures if they don't make a certain grade. What makes it worse is that the goalposts keep shifting and all schools seems to have a different idea of what an old Level 4 looks like under the new curriculum. Of course there are other terrible things going on in the world and there are children in much worse situations around the globe but everything is relative.

Nope. I haven't had hundreds of conversations with dd. The only conversations I have had with her are that they are not worth getting upset about, and that is only when she brings it up.

Resilience to these tests would mean that they do their best, yes, but that their results do not define who they are, or at least only partially - they would certainly have other things in their life, hopefully, that they gain self-efficacy from.

Perfectionism is not a good sign because comes from an "I must do everything perfectly to hide the fact I am not good enough" place which is incredibly unhealthy. Accepting you are not amazing at everything but still enough and valid would be the sign of a resilient person.

I think the teaching unions are also being a bit useless.

They should be telling their members NOT to worry and stress, that if HTs are piling too much pressure on them, then they should be giving them ways of reporting or dealing with it.

All I've heard from them is "it's not fair". No it isn't, so do something about it and he'll your members.

But not all schools are teaching to a very narrow test at the expense of the rest of the curriculum. My year 5 niece has had a very wide and varied curriculum this year. The year 6 have had largely the same, except a couple of weeks given over to test prep.

The problem with yesterday's paper seems to have been that it bore very little resemblance to the sample paper. Either in question type or difficulty. It would take a fair amount of resilience to have had months spent preparing for one thing, then be faced with something completely different.

I do think that a lot of the very publicity around this years SATs hasn't helped either. It may have been needed, but I don't think that is is the ideal way to prepare 11 year olds for a series of tests.

The point is that it is not testing resilience btw

Yet it is showing probably unintentionally, that many children are not very resilient.

YY BicycleBell! The lack of empathy here is astounding.

DD wanted to talk to me about her worries, so I talked to her about them. Sometimes we could talk them out. Sometimes, the only thing to be done was to very firmly shut them down for her, end the worry spiral. I don't understand why conversations prompted by her are a bad thing? Its not as if I'm hovering over her going 'are you worried? Are you stressed? How about now? Feeling nervous?'.

"A lot of the kids who found it 'fine' will be blissfully unaware they have entirely missed the point."

See I read that as a contradiction. My ds who found it 'fine', found it 'fine'. If his resuts don't show that, then so what?

I won't be ashamed or horrified.He just messed up a test. So what? Learn what you did wrong and move on.

Still no drama?

I am not exaggerating to say that I have spoken to ds2 perhaps three times about these SATs

Aren't you lucky. My DD wanted to talk about them. Wanted me to help her with 'past progressives' 'modal verbs' and 'subordinating conjunctions'. Should I have just ignored her?

On looking through her Instagram it seems the majority of her friends did too - there is a whole DM string entitled "SATS are rubbish" with posts going back at least a month.

New system is insane

My youngest is year 8 and in year 6 the school gave some of the children extra classes, sometimes after school. So the pressure had started even then

But not compared to todays pressure, my children coped fine but they may not now

And by the way no one likes to feel stupid. Stick a kid down in front of an exam that they have no hope of doing well in it doesnt matter how much mummy and daddy say it doesnt matter they will still feel stupid and that will affect skme chikdrens self esteem

givepeaseachance

You sound very smug.

Some children are perfectionist by nature. What is a parent to do about that? Or are you suggesting that it's the parent's fault?

In my limited family experience - I have one child with great resilience due to having to deal with a physical disability. Another child who is a perfectionist having found everything easy so far in life.

I don't know what I should have done so far to turn the perfectionist into a resilient child instead. Do you have the answer?

Resilience is not something that you can easily teach, and certainly not by putting children and pre-adolescents through high-stakes testing in this way.

In fact, there is no particular evidence that high-stakes testing improves resilience at all. It may improve resilience in children who were fairly resilient anyway, but it may actually reduce or destroy resilience in others, as the high suicide rate among adolescents in countries like China and South Korea suggests.

Sunny

"If you are blessed to have an able child who breezed through things then that's great for you. Just please try to have an awareness that we're not all in the same boat."

The breeze bit is exactly what I'm talking about - resilience.
The ability bit has no bearing on these exams - whatever their ability, if they had resilience they would 'breeze' through with no drama

So come on then. How do you teach resilience? I'm all ears.