SATs - aibu to opt out, withdraw child from testing?

[MrsOprah]

I did my SATs 20 years ago. Think they were a fairly new concept in the 90s(?) They were fine, scored well, no pressure really was bright child and did extended papers too.
Was described as a way to know where to level kids, results were used by secondary school to decided if you'd be in top-mid-low set for maths, sci, eng.
Obv longer term it has no affect on earnings potential, not put on cv or uni application, so minor benefits had as the test taker.

Nowadays, they seem to be a HUGE deal. Masses of pressure, painted as important! All for schools benefit. Not for kids well being. On that basis, WIBU to ask/decline for my child to sit the tests?

Am I missing something? Why would be anymore likely to put your Sats results on your CV??

You can't. If your child is working below the level of the test, the school can submit teacher assessments. Your only option is to keep them off school for the two week window of the tests but that wouldn't do much for the run up to the tests. Obviously you might incur a fine.

I did trial SATs in Year 6, we were told they were trials, I found it a bit confusing as we hadn’t actually covered all the science content. Don’t think it bothered me although I still remember not knowing the parts of a flower 25 years later so must have made some impact! The problem generally with SATs is not the SATs it’s that the whole of year 6 and even some of year 5 is devoted to them. If you are happy to home ed for year 6 I would go for it but making a child do year 6 in a state school, do a whole year of prep and then not do the exam makes the whole thing pointless.

Do you mean next year? SATs have already started.

You can’t. You could take them out for the test and the following week. But you risk being fined. Even if you do that your child will still have all the pressure and build up for the tests.

Your other option is to remove them from school for year 6 and home educate. This isn’t without its own issues. Especially if your secondary admissions process uses feeder schools or the secondary you want to apply to does use SATs results to set or set yearly/key stage targets.

The problem generally with SATs is not the SATs it’s that the whole of year 6 and even some of year 5 is devoted to them.

The whole of school is devoted to teaching the NC, which is what the children are tested on. Both are statutory.

That is not to say I agree with SATs as a method of assessment though.

They wont allow you to decline.

YABU.
SATs is the culmination of y6 and is a rite of passage for the pupils. If managed sensibly by the school it can be a very positive experience.

Either withdraw and home school for y6, or do SATs. No point in doing all the prep and then showing your child you have no faith in them to actually do the tests.

I would be wary. secondary schools do use the results as a basis for target setting for GCSE and if you think your child will do well it's probably best they take it. Are they supposed to be doing it this year or next? If next I would do the following:

1. tell your child that they just need to do their best with SATs and what they get doesn't matter to you as long as they have tried.

2. refuse to buy your child revisions guides and don't allow them to take part in extra revision during lunchtime or after school.

3. Be prepared to complain if your child is not given curriculum time for sport, art, music and the humanities.

4. Be prepared to complain if there is too much homework.

I am a secondary teacher and I intend to so all of the above to safeguard my children's mental health. I agree with you they are treated as a much bigger deal than they were and the children are not old enough to manage that pressure.

Seems a bit pointless to me to let your child go through months of SATS revision, and then not even let them have the pleasure/experience of taking the test and finding out if they've passed.

My DC are both academically capable tho so the test wasn't/isn't (one started today) a huge deal for them. For a SN child who would find sitting the exam genuinely unbearable then it might be different.

Risky. The year my eldest daughter did SATS they lost some of the completed papers and a couple of girls who went to their secondary schools were put in the bottom set for everything, which was hell. They both gave up and then went private.

You can withdraw your child from SATS they are not compulsory. School Head Teachers will try to suggest you cannot withdraw but they are wrong about that. My son didn't do his year 6 SATS due to anxiety and I think I may withdraw my daughter who is currently year 4 as I am concerned she will be too stressed.

The main benefit of them is school league tables, high schools usually do their own tests and if the child hasn't done SATS there are other things they look at to determine what stream they are in.

OP I seriously considered this last year- unfortunately it wasn’t the tests so much as the entire term spent talking about them - and this from a school where they try very hard to be ‘light touch’ and don’t agree with SATS- I would have had to take him out for a term!

Total waste of time though... he’s in years 7 and it means nothing

We used to have end of term exams, end of year exams, positions according to our marks. Kids in South Korea have it even worse! How much stress can SATs really cause the typical child if they are advised at home to just do the best they can?

DS has just started his SATs week.

The school are providing breakfast for all the kids, a party on Friday when they've finished and are doing art/music/sports as a reward for being stuck inside every morning (the kids voted for the three things they really wanted to do once the SATs for the day were over).

The teacher has had an open door policy for parents to email with any concerns and has taken extra time with SN children in the class (my DS's best friend has autism and his mum was praising the teacher today for the effort they've put in with him).The time hasn't been spent on the SATs, it's been spent explaining what will happen on the day so there's nothing 'new' in his day.

All the kids I've spoken to are really excited about the breakfasts and couldn't care less about the SATs - they've just been told they are tests that have to be done and to do their best. No big deal been made about them.

My kids wouldn't have wanted to have been withdrawn from the actual tests, just the whole term of dull preparation. They quote enjoyed the Sats week, as there was a lot of free time and treats in between the tests.

taratill you cannot remove your child from Sats. It isn't a ploy. Your options are keeping them off school (and maybe getting a fine) or home schooling.

Getting a doctor to write a child off sick is an option but you'd have to have a medical reason for it and it isn't a common occurance.

How does your child think about them? What do they learn by being taken out: that if something is hard you don't need to do it?

Your child does not have to do SATs.

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/sats-primary-school-exams-uk-parents-children-mental-health-a8292821.html

"Last month, Anne Milton, skills minister, wrote in an answer to a parliamentary question that “children attending school are not legally required to sit the national key stage tests”."

Of course children are not legally required to sit SATs. They aren't hunted by police nor parents prosecuted if they do not sit them. However there is no mechanism for parents or anyone else to choose if a child does Sats or not.

Options are sit the test, be working below the level of the test, be absent, home educate or privately educate.

Secondary school is full of assessments and tests. Are you going to take them out of school whenever there is an assessment?

I think it gives a very poor message - "ooh this might be a bit stressful, let's just skip it".

I was very tempted to withdraw my son as a protest. However, I knew it would make life more complicated, so I didn't and he started them today. As several PPs have said - it's not just about the exams, it's about the whole year, and possibly also more than just year 6 which is geared to these tests. Now we've got to exam week, he's just looking forward to getting them over with as it has been so, so, so boring. After this morning's tests, they spent the afternoon doing practice tests for tomorrow. That's how relentless it's been. They've been doing constant practice tests since Easter. No music lessons. No art. Only RE as light relief (it's a church school, although I'm sure it's a very bad example of one - they're not all like this).

I didn't let him do any revision classes or buy any books. I did let him do the homework, as it wasn't excessive and the maths looked to be quite useful stuff. Had it been overwhelming, I'd have quashed it immediately. Luckily he's quite able, so the content hasn't been too difficult.

The school has been dreadful and I'm appalled and disgusted. My older DS went through the same 2 years ago. I've posted about the SATs on here before and I know that some schools manage to deal with them in a much lighter way. I realise the stress on the schools, but schools do not need to pass on that stress to the kids.

Last week one of my son's school friends (a normally very quiet and studious girl) organised a petition saying how fed up they all were of the SATs pressure. Instead of listening to what they were saying, the Head rounded up all those who'd signed it, gave them a right telling off, told them they were ungrateful to the teachers, made many of them cry, and made them apologise.

I am counting the hours till he's out of that shit hole.

It seems to be a moot point whether or not the results actually matter to the child (we know they matter to the school). I'd like to think any secondary school worth its salt would disregard the results and would monitor / evaluate/ test / stream the children once they've settled into secondary school, and carry on doing so. That's what our local secondary does, thank goodness. Surely it's in everyone's interests not to label a child based on some stupid test taken aged 10/11. I realise the reality is not like that in all cases.

It is the build up rather than the actual test that's the problem.

I have a y2. He's too young to assess for dyslexia which seems ironic in the face of being assessed in SATs. He can at least have the concession of his coloured glasses so he can read without the text swimming around the page. His teacher is great and keeping things low key, but the effort of increased writing recently, plus a booster class means that he's tired and it's like going through the terrible twos again when he gets home as the concentration is past his limits, and the frustration explodes when he gets home. And all for what? So his teacher can state if he is below/ at/ or above some arbitary age expectation. Which is bloody marvellous when he can explain that his name has a split diagraph, but can't yet write it accurately. Sigh.

Year 6 SATs are a travesty. So much effort in drilling children to pass specific tests, and they get to y7 with a very limited breadth of education. Then by GCSE you're supposed to get them to a target grade set in your unrelated subject based on a year's coaching in it, in another school from 3-5 years earlier which bears no ressemblence to their aptitude in the subject and life events since then. Not that they actually chose your subject, but were shoehorned in because of Michael Gove's whims, and the need to generate the right data to avoid the attentions of OFSTED and takeovers by academy chains (which was the whole reason why the y6s were coached in the first place)

Still, at least being an ex or at least a "resting" teacher, I now have the time to give my own knackered kids some relaxation to help them deal with the system.

Tempting as it is to withdraw them, it's the curriculum and build up that is the issue and not the test itself. I've no great appetite to make a statistically significant screw-up in the school's data (small cohort) for his poor teachers to face the consequences for.

I agree it's the build up that's the problem rather than the actual tests themselves. So unless you are willing to home educate for the whole of yr 6 I don't really see the point in withdrawing them.

At a lot of schools the SATS results are used for setting in secondary schools.