To go & speak to the teacher?

[PickYerWillyCircus]

Long time lurker, occasional poster & sporadic commenter here. Have NC.
Year 6 SATs today & DDs teacher flicked through her answers & indicated that an answer was wrong & that she should change it. That's my first issue. Isn't it supposed to be a proper test? With no help? Turning my DD into a cheat?
Secondly, DD is a perfectionist. The teacher had also indicated that DD should focus on a certain part of the question which then changed the method required to work out the answer. DD did this method & changed her answer.
After the test, teacher mentioned a few people having an issue with this question & went through with them on the board. Turns out DD had done it correctly in the first place. She put her hand up straight away & told teacher this but the teacher said she hadn't seen it, apologised & said something along the lines of 'ah well, it's only one mark'.
DD has a flair for the over-dramatic so of course, she had a cry in the toilets & has moaned all evening. Not getting full marks is important to her, especially as she'd been correct until the teacher told her she wasn't.
(DD is doing great at school,btw, already has a place at grammar, I'm not too fussed about the results of the SATs - I know she'll do well, but I don't see them as having any importance tbh) She is devoed though. Wwyd?

The system is corrupt, in a variety of schools I've witnessed additional help being given. But the pressure on teachers from SLT is great and the pressure from Ofsted & the government to the SLT is immense too.
Whilst you can be furious with the teacher, the issue is with the Dept for Ed and it's ludicrous testing system.
I feel for everyone involved.

hadalifeonce Nope, targets are based on the nationally standardised tests. Your comment about everything being done by the book made me smile. Did you personally observe every single test?

I believe maladministration is rife, almost entirely as a result of governmental policies that place great pressure in schools, which becomes great pressure on individual teachers to ensure the attainment of individual pupils.

OP, I don't know what you should do. Cheating isn't good. The teacher may well be fired. And she may have been given very clear instructions to do what she did by her boss. Tricky.

Please raise this with the Head of Governors. I teach in Y6 and we have two adults in every room to ensure that one adult can't act in this way. I have to walk around the room with my hands in my pockets as I know that if i just pointed at a question the child would realise it was wrong and change it. It would be so very easy for a lone adult in a room to commit malpractice. Whilst SATs are somewhat of a farce, schools must do everything they can to administer them honestly so that they are a reflection of the child's own work (unlike the writing assessment but don't get me started on the various tricks teachers use to 'improve' the writing teacher assessment). If you don't bring this to the attention of someone it will continue to happen and that is just not fair.

Mean, I did 3 and had to sign for keys to unlock drawers with test papers in, there was never 1 adult alone with papers. I 'supervised' the return of completed papers, and had to sign for the completed papers to be put in the returning envelopes. I am appalled that secondary schools rely on tests taken by 10 &11 year olds to predict GCSE grades. That's crazy..... a child changes dramatically after primary school, it should be an ongoing assessment.

OP, you should report the cheating, regardless. It's wrong on so many levels.

It's bad and yes, I think you could/should report it.

However, if it cheers your daughter up, surely she will now get her correct and honest mark - the teacher told her to change one wrong answer to a right one and one right answer to a wrong one. So it will balance out? Or have I misread that?

I agree with @eyeoresancerre
Also think you're doing your DD a disservice in not helping her to more constructively deal with such extreme perfectionism

Ha I knew the haters would start saying that I wouldn't be moaning if my DDs answer had been wrong & the teacher corrected it correctly she would have benefitted, which was exactly why I pointed out in my OP that I really couldn't give a shit about the SATs or their results. Unfortunately, my DD does. Obviously they've placed importance on them at school.
If DDs answer had been wrong & teacher had corrected, no I wouldn't be 'moaning', but only as DD probably wouldn't have mentioned anything to me about it in the first place! She'd have probably gone about her day, but instead she feels upset.
I'm furious that she's been encouraged to cheat by a person she respects & that I've had to listen to her whinge all evening.
Thanks to all who have commented, I will be writing to the Governors/Head.

Just google /teacher cheating SATs/ or indeed /headteacher cheating SATs/ to see how prevalent this is. And I imagine the cases of cheating which actually get reported and investigated are only the tip of a rather large iceberg.

It should be reported but will probably come to nothing. I've heard of this happening at earlier SATs and it's just setting up kids and teachers for a hard slog ahead in the constant battle to 'prove' progress and achievement.

@Hadalifeonce I'm a bit surprised that as a primary school governor you don't know that secondary schools' GCSE targets are based on KS2 results as statutory measure.
Believe me no secondaries would be doing it by choice!

I think you have to report to the standards and testing agency.

Also @Hadalifeonce - you are absolutely right in what you suggest about the better ways to assess and set targets!

I'm also surprised that a governor doesn't know that KS2 test results are used to set progress measures for secondary schools. Just like primary schools have to use KS1 assessments.

Both will of course use ongoing assessment to track - but they still have to meet those targets.

I'm not at all surprised by this. This report is quite interesting:

ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2018/04/difficult-questions-about-some-schools-key-stage-2-results/

We had this problem in secondary schools when coursework and controlled assessment was allowed for GCSE. It is incredibly hard to be the one person standing up and saying "no" to cheating, especially when your job depends on the students' results.

This sounds like the kind of ridiculousness which went on in the school I worked at for the last two years. They cheated completely in the Year 2 and Year 6 and it made me sick. There was such a culture of bullying and gaslighting that the teachers were powerless. Don’t report it to the Head - the Head is probably telling the teachers to do it. Go straight to the .gov website and report for maladministration. This really needs to stop.

@Hadalifeonce
No, the crazy part is not predicting GCSE results from tests at age 10 and 11. The crazy part is predicting GCSE results from tests at age 10 and 11 in a completely different subject. So for PE, RS, Geography, French, Art, Music whatever, all done on a combination of their SATS English and Maths results. I remember having a conversation with a particular child several times explaining that while he hadn't got his target grade, he was doing really well and making great progress, just that I had to put his target grade based partly on his (brilliant) maths SATS result and obviously that wasn't very relevant in History.

I've often wondered how some schools excel in their SATs results, the pressure almost definitely comes from the top, as parents won't want to send their child to a school, that doesn't attain the relevant SATs benchmark.

Same with OFSTED reports, an Excellent school can be rarely looked at for a decade, then when parents complain & a further assessment is done, said school is put in Special Measures. The parents feel cheated that they were misled.

When at school we did a lot of psychometric tests, I'm not sure if we were part of an experiment or they were standard practise, but I was predicted the highest grades, found out with little effort I could still get B's and was aware my grades meant more to the school than me.

The last few weeks / months have had my youngest sent home with extra work every night almost, in areas requiring improvement. I made a point of saying as long as you do your best that's all you can do. I told them about the tier system at secondary school, that should they be in an unsuitable band they will be moved accordingly, do not worry.

In life in general as long as they try their best that's all they can do.

I suspect many schools do this. I think my sibling did them and was called back to 'reanswer' some questions, this was decades ago. So it's been rife since then really.

It is ridiculous to do gcse prediction based on something not even in that school. What if they go to a crap primary but others in the secondary went to a better one. The secondary will push the second one harder.
But much worse than this is how these predictions affect SB children. If they havent caught up by end of primary they then have a much harder job to catch up as WB kids with better sats would be prioritised.
But particularly english and maths at primary is vastly different to gcse/alevel. Kids that can cope with times tables can't necessarily do algebra etc.
Also i was crap at English but very good at foreign languages so even if something seems like a logical extrapolation isnt always correct.

Algebra is part of the Y6 curriculum...

It isn't just GCSE.

It is also primary schools, if your kids do well at Year 2 SATs then they have to make even more progress for their year 6 SATs.
Also, if a child has been in the school for 4 terms, their results (after 5 years NOT in your school ) still effect the school statistics, and if that poor kid happens to be English Additional Language, and they arrived beofre 1st September in year 5, they must have perfect English of year 6 SATs level by May in year 6

I agree that teachers shouldn’t be doing this but I think it happens at lots of schools unfortunately. I was in a sats test this morning and one of my colleagues walked round and silently pointed at questions to get children to look at them again and re do them. Her argument is that she knows other teachers do it so why shouldn’t she...!

You need to report this to the LA as well as the head/ COG. The pressure schools are under with this is horrendous and as others have said, it is very likely that the head is at the very least tacitly condoning cheating and not all COGs are as independent and critical as they should be. The LA will have a duty to investigate. Good luck, it's an awful position to be put in and I hope your DD feels better about it soon.

muffintip That is maladministration and very serious - please report using the STA number above.

Actually, if you don't, you're also at risk as a test administrator who was also in the room.