Is the school taking the p!ss?

[nat73]

Long story but the primary school our kids go to is very nice and relaxed but their SATs results this year were dire. For some time we have been thinking that the 'extra curricular' activities outweigh the actual curricular activities. I know kids should be kids etc and we spend lots of time on weekends playing with playdough and in the garden, on bikes etc. So I do expect time at school to be used for 'learning' and better still learning to read and write.

Warm up to Xmas at our primary school included (for the whole school): Xmas concert, Xmas fair, Xmas party, Xmas lunch, trip to the pantomime and all day trip out.

In 2 weeks time there is another whole school trip. Year 6 go on an all week outward bound course (4 nights) during the week and I notice other schools do it over a weekend.

I went into the school before Xmas to express my concerns about the SATs results and that they are nothing learning stuff in enough depth. I was told there is so much to cover that in the time available there is not time to do everything in alot of detail.

Year 6 have 2 after school sessions per week to try to improve the SATs scores. Then I find out this week that for 12 weeks they are having someone from the local community to come in to talk about an aspect of popular culture for 30 mins per week.

Is this a wind up? If there is not enough time to cover the curriculum in detail why are they a) doing so many trips and Xmas stuff and b) spending 6 hours on popular culture. I dont mind this being an after school club or something but why have pupils stay after school to study for SATs and then spend time in the day pratting about?

My husband says I should complain to the governors but I feel like I have come to the end of the road on this. Is this normal? Are all primary schools pratting around this much?

I wouldn't be interested in the SAT scores to be honest.......

1. everyone's SATS results were dire this year. If you are really concerned look at the year before. But be careful, if it is one class entry the results are very skewed by small numbers.
2. my kids school do must of what you have listed and they still manage to do SATS. Apart from the mess of the new exams this year, our results are excellent. So the two can go together.
3. SATS results are for school not child.

SATs < 30% = dire. I wouldnt mind but part of the reason given for the SATs result was the inability to find time to squeeze it all in hence SATs booster out of hours. I am all for interesting clubs etc don't consider it a core use of time (if you are short of time).

Two other schools nearby are doing the same outward bound for only 3 nights over the weekend. I feel like the school does all the fun bits (camping, pantomime) which surely we can do as a family? Why is it part of school?

I totally understand that SATs has no meaning / value for the child but it is 'meant' to measure the quality of the teaching at the school. Yes DCs are up to 'expected' on reading and writing but that's due to them reading to me every day - some of their peers are well behind.

I guess schools have changed a lot since I was at school - we just had a carol service and that was it! Now its an industry!

It sounds very similar to our primary school and the Sats results are good at ours. Although the Y6 week long trip is now set for after the Sats. We can have extra workbooks to do at home if we want them in the run up to the Sats. But yes, we have all that and more around Xmas and we have no after school sessions for Sats. I think possibly they do a few days in the Easter holidays following the mocks if it's needed.

I think partly it's because the catchment is quite "easy" here. Affluent area, mostly graduate parents. Good teachers want to work at the school and I can't fault them, they are fantastic.

But yes our school probably prats around more than you mention there. If the teaching quality is good and the parents are on board with helping at home, it shouldn't be a problem. It gets boring if they have no fun stuff.

I should add EAL and FSM at the school is low.

I just get the feeling (and have done for about 2 years) that the school puts more energy into the 'additional stuff' than the main 'stuff'. Other parents have commented on this too. When children move to our school from other schools they comment on the increased number of trips...

I'm all for enrichment but I'd rather enrich the kids at the same time as teaching them the basics. I get the feeling that people either think school can be 'fun' (messy play, endless school trips etc) or it has to be S Korean style. Is there nothing in between?

But I still don't get why do SATs sessions after school and popular culture during the school day??? Just doesn't make sense to me..

Well my kids are well beyond primary school age now but I have never paid the remotest bit of attention to the SATS results of our local primary school.

It was a good village school where the kids were happy, reading, writing and arithmetic were adequately taught etc. They also did most of the extra-curricular activities you describe so I would say that is pretty normal.

There was all of the run-up to Christmas stuff, various day trips and a 5 day residential one in year 6 which ran from Monday morning to Friday evening. They would all come back exhausted (particularly the staff, I think) and had the weekend to recover. If the residential took place over the weekend then it would wipe everybody out for most of the week, not to mention that teachers would be being asked to give up their own free/family time for no extra pay to go away with your children.

One year our school decided to boycott the SATS, and was broadly supported in that by most parents as it took so much of the pressure off.

SATS results really aren't everything. If you really must set so much store by them then look back over previous years, not 2016 which was the first of the new tests and therefore the bedding in period where teachers were in the dark about what the papers would even look like.

There is key stage 3 and key stage 4 in secondary schools (or was last time I did actually look), but nobody ever talks about those because the important yardstick is the GCSE and A Level results.

purplecollar - I should add we have very low % of graduate parents so most children are relying on the school for the bulk of their education. I used to listen to the children read and 1 child I was the only person who listened to her all academic year which I thought was very sad..

I totally understand that SATs has no meaning / value for the child - apart from the fact that their GCSE predictions are based on them.
Secondary schools can reassess as much as they like the first few weeks of Year 7, but the Yr 6 results are the only ones that count.

If your own DC are doing well why do you care so much? Listening to your DC read every night is normal BTW. It's what schools expect from parents. Some peers will always be behind.

You have heard t the nail in the head there.
Parents want both all the fun stuff, with the increase number of trips etc... AND the good results in SATs.
And yes it also works better if it's after school probably because it means their dcs is spending more time revising and do that extra effort so it has to be good.

My dcs never have done an extra time after school for the SATS and they did very well. But they did the work during the day, which is fair enough, with extra support for the dcs that needed it (during assembly time and the likes).

And yes on paper the results they have at the SATS doesnt matter
In reality, a child that skint doing well and is behind coming out primary WILL struggle more at secondary too.
E.g. The won't be doing any spelling anymore so if they don't have a good grasp, they will struggle iyswim.

The issue rally isn't the results at the SATS, it's what they represent (even if it's a very gross evaluation), i.e. How well a child has learnt the basics they need coming of primary.
That's also why it's a good predictor to their results at CGSE and then at A Levels.

And yes it's sad that, in some ways, the future of our dcs is written down by the time they are 10~11yo. But that's also the reality (in all countries too, not juts the uk)

SATs are ridiculous! They put stress on teachers, children, parents and ultimately the schools budget. One test a year does not show you the reality of your child's achievements or indeed knowledge! I've worked in schools for nearly thirty year, during these years an ever changing rota of so called "Education Ministers" or "Education Specialists" have in the most literal sense messed with our kids heads, made teachers resign once they see that "resistance is futile" and most of all dumbed down the nation. I have put these positions in parentheses because I have yet to encounter an "Education Minister" or the likes that actually knows anything about pedagogics, child development and the teaching reality. All we school staff are getting fed is party political / council political education humbug which we have to follow because otherwise (a very thinly veiled threat) Ofsted will find us failing so the Academy engine can run over schools that don't buckle up and follow the party paper trail.
Dear Mums.....if you think your child is doing well then the school is doing a good job. If a school has a low grade Ofsted that does NOT mean it's a bad school! It probably means that it values every child and gives them individual attention, hence not the correct paperwork or results. I say this with conviction since I've worked in so called failing schools where every pupil matters and teachers just don't see that they should sacrifice teaching individuals to paperwork. My son went to a so called failing school and now has his own business....that's because his teachers encouraged him to explore, question, be ahead of the class or behind and they always supported him, my foster baby will go to the same school because of that, despite Ofsted rating it as "good" I think it is outstanding+++......start a revolution, girls! Your kids are worth more than being victims for SATs and Ofsted and the government "specialists".

I should add we have very low % of graduate parents so most children are relying on the school for the bulk of their education.

So, likely they are not taking them on trips to museums, hence school do. Our old school did one trip per half term per year group. That was high I think, but still managed good SATs, was a very high EAL and FSM.

I really think the week out before SATs for the residential is great. They can get a bit burnt out, but this allows them to relax and have fun for a week, come back ready to work hard.

When my dc did them, admittedly 3yrs ago, SATS would have been all very well if they had been a true reflection on what children had learned over 6 yrs.

But they were actually more a reflection on what had been crammed into them a few weeks before the tests. Much of which they'd never even seen before and a lot of which was sent home for parents to teach as 'homework'.

So whilst fun stuff and umpty nine dressing up days is great, if that isn't what they are expected to know at the end of 6 years, then the emphasis needs to be on other things from the off, rather that putting everyone through a stressful crash course in yr 6.

I totally understand that SATs has no meaning / value for the child

Wrong. Some children want to do well in them for their own personal achievement. After preparing and sitting for 11+ for various different schools, I was ready to take a relaxed approach to SATS and say to dd not to worry too much. However, SHE wanted to work hard and do well in them. She achieved a Level 6 for Maths and very close to a 6 for English which she was delighted with.

I'm on the fence whether I agree with them or not. But I do believe that schools shouldn't spend so much time preparing for them especially out of school hours. It should be a measure of how good the teaching is, not how much time is spent preparing for them.

I think with Y6 sats particularly, I would prefer that they assess them in the comfort of a school they've been at several years than on starting secondary when it's such a big change. They need to assess them to put them in ability groups.

We have mocks in February after which I'm expecting to find out the areas we need to work on. I have no problem with this really. If they've got gaps, they need to be filled.

Lots of schools had dire SATs results this year, and nationally results were hugely depressed in comparison to last year, because the government introduced a new curriculum which is supposed to be accessed over years 3-6 for KS2, but last year the poor sods sitting the tests were supposed to have covered it in the last couple of years, so what do you expect? The government is so out of touch, it originally set the floor standard for children meeting age related expectations in maths, reading, SPAG and writing under the new curriculum at 85%, then lowered it to 65% and nationally last year, only 53% of children actually achieved it. Besides which, nobody knew what to expect from the new tests because the DfE managed the whole fiasco so badly, leaving schools uncertain until the last minute what was expected of them. In some schools, virtually no children achieved age related expectations. So, I question quite how badly your children's school is actually doing, and is any problem they have in, e.g., just maths, or in getting enough children to meet expectations in all areas, or a problem overall? And how big is the school, anyway? The smaller the school, the more dramatic the percentage differences can appear to be each year just because of the particular cohorts of children. If th school is carrying on with its extra curricular offerings rather than going into panic mode and teaching nothing but SPAG and maths, I suspect the situation is not as dire as you seem to fear!

You don't have to send your child after school.
They cannot make it compulsory.
At DS primary, they just stopped all other homework, gave them a piece of grammar and a piece of comprehension homework per week and then maths. It was easier than doing stupid volcano projects week in week out but was done at home, not extra tuition after school.

Sounds like a fantastic school, wish mine had gone there.

SATS mean nothing and having graduate parents doesn't mean relying on the school for everything at all, poorly educated but engaged parents who encourage their children and learn alongside are even better.

I don't see a problem. If you do, you have two choices, take them out of the school and put them in one that does what you want or get tutors if you really think your children are that far behind.

I totally understand that SATs has no meaning / value for the child - apart from the fact that their GCSE predictions are based on them. Secondary schools can reassess as much as they like the first few weeks of Year 7, but the Yr 6 results are the only ones that count

How will a state secondary manage to predict GCSE grades for my dc who are at private school and therefore don't sit SATS?

apart from the fact that their GCSE predictions are based on them.
Secondary schools can reassess as much as they like the first few weeks of Year 7, but the Yr 6 results are the only ones that count.

The word predictor is exactly that it gives an estimate not the actual grade - just because the SATS predict a maths GCSE grade of 5 doesn't mean they can't get a 6/7/8/9 nor does it mean that they won't get lower

With the exception of writing, the KS2 SATs test results just tell you whether your child met "age-related expectations" in a few timed tests over the space of a few days. They do not actually tell you whether the child is ready for secondary school - just whether the child can come up with a few formulaic answers to a few often rather stupid questions within a certain time frame, covering only a small part of everything they are supposed to have been taught in primary school. Some schools waste far too much of their children's lives in teaching them to the test and ignoring the majority of the curriculum. Those schools panic somewhat when, e.g., randomly asked to get the children to sit additional science SATs papers, or are asked about their foreign language or music provision, or engagement with the local community, or extra curricular provision. It is hard for schools to get the balance right, I think, particularly when there is so much overbearing political interference.

I would disagree, actually. that GCSE predictions are based on a test that evaluates a primary school/its staff, for any individual child. And I type as someone whose older child failed her SATs completely, yet was predicted A's and A stars in her GCSE exams - and obtained them.

I also type as someone who lectures individuals who have been unfortunate enough to have endured SATs and all of the pressure that they caused. They don't create a willingness to learn (quite the opposite, we're all finding as time goes on), and at college/university level, those of us involved in selecting the individual for a course that does, actually, determine their futures (why choose to study something at university level, and rack up thousands of pounds of debt, if it's not a subject you want to spend the rest of your life working in/around?), what primary school you went to, or how you did in your SAT exams...?

Not important.

In the slightest.

Senior schools are evaluated by their GCSE/possibly their 'A'level results. Primary schools are evaluated by their SAT results. Both are evaluated by their Ofstead reports.

But Primary is to do with the teaching, senior is to do with the individual student. And by the time they get to university... they're adults and are meant to have figured out how to study from GCSE and 'A'levels. Not SATs.

The sats are to test the schools ability to teach and effective outcomes of their curriculum.

So of the school are providing the curriculum they are then I suspect they think it will work.

My Ds has ASD and for the 18 months before SATS spent 2 afternoons a week in a nurture group learning social stuff. He made most academic progress during this time.

Learning isn't just about being fed masses of information - it's about a balance and being put in a position that you are ready to learn.

I think the school sounds great - it sounds a very balanced and all round curriculum.

Even if they do use SATS to predict GCSE results (which is ridiculous except as a general whole-school 'what is the spread of grades likely to look like for that cohort' prediction), who cares what the child's predicted grades were once they get their actual GCSE grades? It's not like A Levels, where they are getting university offers based on predictions.

Dh is a deputy head in a comprehensive school. He says they take little notice of the SATS and use the CATS and their own assessments for setting and predictions. Nobody trusts the SATS results to tell them anything useful, especially last year's.

I'm glad our primary got good SATS results because it made them look good to Ofsted and to any parents who take notice of SATS results when choosing a school for their child. It's a small school, so numbers on roll can be precarious. If I were looking at a new school for my dc, the SATS results would probably tell me more about the school's intake and demographics and levels of SEN than about anything else I wanted to know tbh.