Boycotting year 6 SAT's

[notasinglefuckgiven]

My 11 year old DC are due to do year 6 SAT's in May.
The pressure and the build up to these tests have been horrendous and have turned my DC from a happy, confident, outgoing child into a tearful , anxious
I

Yep that’s fine. Opt out of the real world and have lots of snuggly bunny mummie time instead.

You are not setting your kid up to know how to deal with pressure and life. Great parenting.

I can’t believe the pressure put on kids these days. I couldn’t read til 7. I struggled with maths til 2nd year in secondary school. Left school with top a level grades in the school, top degree at a Russel group uni, 2sets of professional exams later I’m doing ok. I’m horrified if a secondary school uses exam results from 3years age to choose options. How fucking moronic to think a child hasn’t changed ability in 3 years! My plan with sats is to explain to DS what they are there for and it’s not important then if some idiot brings them up 3years later il del with that then.

Lovesagain I love your response hope you don’t mind if I use that in the future

My DS got massively stressed in the run up to SATS, to the extent I had to have meetings with the head etc. I constantly told him it didn't matter what marks he got, but he was still anxious.

However, he absolutely loved SATS week! The papers were sent away to be marked, so he knew there would never be any personal comeback for him if he hadn't got high marks. And SATS week was quite a nice week for the kids, because when they weren't doing tests, they basically played outside. DS loved the fact that the had so much free time that week! He still remembers it as his easiest week in primary school!!

What AddictedToRadley* said. Teach your kids that the most important thing is to do your best and try your hardest so you get the best result you can for you. Whether you (and they) like it or not school is about taking exams and learning how to do so. The results don’t matter a jot in this case so it’s a chance to practice with no real pressure. Teaching them they can just side-step anything too difficult and go on a jolly with Mum is a terrible lesson. I’d be promising them a treat afterwards as a reward for trying. Your job is to support them through it and teach them how to cope so it’s a bit easier when they face something similar in the future - which they will.

You can't boycott SATs but you can do everything to minimise the stress at home. Keep reminding your child that it is just another test. Most schools do termly assessments anyway so children are used to doing them. Schools make the week as enjoyable as possible and most have treat on the Friday. Give your child a good breakfast each day, but otherwise downplay the whole thing as much as possible.

Secondary schools do use the results as a predictor for GCSEs, although they will also do their own baseline assessments.

I do object to the overlearning in Yr 6. My DS could have passed SATS at the start of Yr 6 so learned nothing with all the revision. He got bored and loved school a lot less in Yr 6. Luckily in Yr 7 he has learned to love learning again.

When I take over the world I'll certainly be ditching SATS, but until then you'll just have to go with them!

As a secondary school teacher I quite like students who didn't sit their SATs. If we have no baseline data on them, we can't effectively measure progress and therefore that student isn't included in our results.

I had a student last year who did get a 4 in my subject but it wouldn't have mattered if she had got a 2 because her results weren't counted.

Also why shouldn't schools use SATs to inform GCSE choices? It's a major exam that the students will have fully prepared for, the results are useful. True, every child might have an off day / week but the results are a fairly reliable guide of their ability (Or at least they were until you needed a reading age of 15 to access them like last year)

@bridgetjonesmassivepants that’s really interesting to say that a child without SATS doesn’t count against your results.

I know many teachers are fantastic but would you say that that could open up the possibility that a bad teacher might not try as hard with a child whose results don’t count. Eg they might not try to get the child’s result higher as hard as in effect it wouldn’t reflect on the teacher anyway?

Just an interesting thought from your last post and I’m in no way saying that that would be what most teachers would do.

I have sat a lot of exams in my life. I have a degree from Cambridge, a postgraduate degree and a professional qualification. But I swear that I was never as a child place under the kind of relentless pressure that has become the norm for children in exam years in the UK. So it's perfectly possible to "prepare for exams" without the level of madness that my 10 year old certainly experienced in year 6 and my 15 year old is experiencing now in year 11. We learned stuff, we revised for few weeks, then we did our best. No extra after-school sessions, no magic formula for model answers, we didn't even know there was a mark scheme and were certainly not trained to jump through grammatical hoops to squeeze out extra marks for "good" writing.

But that is the world we now live in and I have no idea how you change it.

I’m a Year 6 teacher and I don’t agree with the tests at all. However, they will be working on work towards the SATs right up until they take them, so the pressure is going to be constant for the next couple of months. If your child is in school but you’re withdrawing them from the tests, they’re still going to have to do the same revision work so will still be under pressure as such. Even once they’re over, there’ll be the pressure of the written work in literacy that isn’t a “test” but teacher assessed. That won’t stop. We always tells our students not to worry, we’ll do the worrying for them and use the tests as a chance to show off and show what they can do.

The SATS are shit but to avoid the pressure you should have taken them out at Christmas. They've been prepping for weeks. They're doing mocks this week at our school. I just keep saying that it's to test teachers. And we're in a grammar school area but it hasn't made an iota of difference

“My DS could have passed SATS at the start of Yr 6 so learned nothing with all the revision”

Sorry but I’d have to disagree with that. Year 6 isn’t just ALL revision, there is a huge amount of new learning to be done that isn’t taught prior to Year 6. Year 6 is new learning and revising everything from every other year. Unless your child has been having tuition, there’s no way they could pass there SATs at the beginning of Year 6, as no school would have covered all the curriculum before that.

Go for it dipity, it wiped the smirk off her face and ds was a different kid after that meeting because he knew I had his back.

Doesn't stress all kids out. They're not a big deal in our house. Seen as bit of fun quizzes!

Neither of my kids took their 'Sats'. Now in secondary school it has done them no harm whatsoever, because guess what, the Sats are pretty meaningless for the child. The secondary school did a baseline test when they joined and put them in an appropriate sets within their year group. Mostly in the top set.

My eldest child had never sat an exam before his GCSEs and he passed them all first time. Many of his peers (who had taken Sats) have had to retake their maths and English. So what does that say about the Sats preparing them for exams or helping them in secondary education?

Then you would be teaching your child to run away when things get tough.

Also my secondary school uses SAT results to set you and all the way to the end of hear 9 to look at predicted grades.

Just tell your child that you don't care how well they do.

Taking dc out for the duration of the SATS because YOU want to boycott them is ridiculous. Your poor child has been subjected to months of discussion, stress, extra homework, booster groups, threats, bribes, endless sats practice... and when it's just about to finish you then decide all her /his months of hard work are pointless and pull them out. It's like training for the marathon and booking a weekend away on the day of it.

I think it goes from school to school. The school I work in really doesn't make a big deal of SATs to the kids at all. Obvs we do in the staffroom but the Head is very clear that he doesn't want the kids being stressed out about it.

When mine did them I just stressed that they're not something to stress about and to just treat them as a quiz, which is what they did and it was fine.

I would never have boycotted them, simply for the reason that sometimes you end up doing things that you don't feel like. That's part of life and kids should be taught that.

@NewYearNewMe18

What, the legislation about children needing to attend school and not simply when the parents feel like they should?

I assume you're joking

Every year we get a virtue signalling thread like this about SATS, basically wanting a pat on the back for hating them, then we get the nonsense that they are for the school, not the child!
One parent even made it onto the tv last year with their little 6 year old trying to boycott the year 2 sats. She had her guardian reader sad face on, telling the world how stressed child was. The little child piped up in the background and said "Mummy its you who are making me stressed"
Secondary schools do use SATS for setting,as well as CATs, and my dcs primary sats were on their school even in 6th form.

*Yes, teach them that if something's tough they can just not do it. That everything in life is optional and that if something is hard they should just "have a week of fun".

Also make sure they know that school isn't important and that Mummy always knows best.*

Well said
Also one parent said to me when our children were doing year 6 sats, their child was so anxious and upset they had done nothing that year except my son had come home with a work on Motte and Bailey castles the previous week.

Rather than making an issue out of SATs encourage your child to see it as a challenge. My dyslexic ds got a huge sense of achievement by getting the top marks in science and by working hard managed to just get his grade 4 in english by 2 marks, again a huge sense of achievement.

Yes, teach them that if something's tough they can just not do it. That everything in life is optional and that if something is hard they should just "have a week of fun

Also make sure they know that school isn't important and that Mummy always knows best

sorry that should have been highlighted but again Well Said

SATs week at my DDs school is seen by the children as one of the best weeks! They go in early for big breakfasts together, they get to do fun things after the tests and as the (state) school is lucky enough to have a swimming pool, they have a pool party too

DD will be doing her SATs this year so I hope they live up to the reputation.

Yes I feel frustrated about the pressure they're under from what feels like yr5 onwards but a lot will come down to the school and how they manage the experience. As others have said, exams are just part of school life and you shouldn't just pull your DC out because you don't like them

YABU

The stress is mainly in the run up, not the actual test week. Often test weeks are fun with special breakfasts and extra breaktime.
Talk to the school if they are putting too much pressure on, they don't need to.
You can do a lot at home to reduce any pressure the school are putting on.

By withdrawing from SATs you will be sending out a signal that you don't think your DC can cope, you have no faith in them.

SATs is a 'rite of passage' for y6 children, they mature/grow up a lot after the tests as they feel they have been through something and come out the other side.

I was a TA in primary when my older 3 were doing their year 6 SATS. (same school)

At work it was all SATS Are The Very Reason For Our Existence and these children MUST ALL PAAAAAAAASS. The run up to them was extraordinary. Months and months of prep. Stress stress stress.

At home in front of my DCs i was: What tests? The SATS? Oh don't worry about those , they're just a little test to make sure the teachers are teaching you properly.

DCs were fine.

One extreme to the next. I used to swing between what i believed about them myself!

bruffin I agree with your sentiments in general. It is really not a good idea to teach a child they can avoid anything they find stressful.

However, I think labelling this as 'virtue signalling' is unfair, and probably untrue. I realise it is a current buzz-phrase, but it is not automatically the case that every time somebody is concerned about something they are 'virtue-signalling' if they voice their concerns. Many people are concerned about the overly stressful way SATS are being implemented, and with good reason.

A little stress that they can overcome is good for children to learn emotional resilience. Too much, that is too prolonged, is overwhelming, and actually makes a child less resilient. The Education Secretary and schools need to learn this. Children's psychological well-being should not be sacrificed on the altar of adults' careers. It is a good thing, IME, that concerns are raised (not that they have been lister to thus far). If everyone keeps quiet about injustices for fear of being labelled as 'virtue signalling' we all ultimately suffer.