AIBU to at least consider pulling DS out of STATS

[JemimaPyjamas]

Firstly, I am posting here for traffic.

Secondly, of course I am going to discuss this with his teacher but I can’t at the moment as it’s the holidays!

DS is 11 in June and doing well at school (excellent in English, ok in Maths although he doesn’t find it easy or enjoy it like other subjects.) He’s become wound up and stressed and, long story short, it’s the prospect of STATS week.

The homework has ramped up as it’s now basically ‘revision’ and, briefly touching on it on parents evening his (excellent) teacher did say that ‘it’s for the school rather than the kids’ and they try and keep it ‘low key’ although I think that’s more on the actual week than to the build up.

A teacher friend in the secondary he’s going to in Sept said the children are assessed again there, I get the impression more informally, to determine what sets they go in and I am now wondering what the point of STATS, from the children’s perspective, actually is.

In the night I couldn’t sleep and found that some have taken their kids out and done other (constructive) things and I would be interested in hearing other views as I’m currently worried and also a bit clueless - I may be totally missing the point over why they are essential!

I don’t want to add loads more as typing on my phone (will be on my laptop in a bit) but we’ve tried some things to relax him about it but not loads so suggestions there are very welcome too. I’ve never taken him out before either. He’s not normally a stressy kid but I think he feels really pressured to the point where logic doesn’t work as well.

Agree with everyone else. Taking him out tells him when the pressure is on he can just not do tests. He is going to have many during secondary school, college, University etc. Don't make a big deal of it at home.

Thank you for the replies, especially those who have been constructive as opposed to just scathing!

Neither of us are increasing pressure at home, it seems to be the constant stream of homework that is doing it. We have a folder of work to get through over Easter too (admittedly, the layout means there isn't quite as much work as the number of sheets implies but as I said earlier, logic isn't always working at the moment.) The Easter stuff is currently untouched even though it's supposed to be 'only 20 minutes a day.' I know that's not long, but I also don't recall ever getting work through the holidays, and hence it seemed added pressure. As I said previously, I suppose it's basically revision.

I am not remotely 'anxious' or 'passing my anxieties on' although seeing my son behaving so differently for something that, once over, won't really make much difference does make you wonder what the point even is. This would obviously not apply to a GCSE or university context, and I would have thought that by that time he'd be a very different person to the one he is at 10 as it'd be a bit weird otherwise!

@Sarah180818 Thank you - you make a lot of sense and it sounds as if your daughter also had a similar kind of experience. @hoover12345 You summed it up well too!

I am in too minds with emphasising that they don't matter in the long run to DS - it could go either way at the moment! Will have to play that by ear and work it out. @TeenDivided I sometimes suggest we leave out some of the homework and just concentrate on a smaller part. Sometimes that works, other times he doesn't want to as they all mark each others work 'so whoever is marking mine will know I've not done it all.' I like the angle of him having done all the work already though, it's just looking at it again. An obvious angle really but sometimes you need someone to point out the obvious.

@JemimaPyjamas I completely get where you are coming from and the pressure my child’s school put on the kids was horrific, it actually resulted in us having to change schools and 3 months of trauma counselling.

I got absolutely flamed on another group and called an out and out liar for what my child went through but unfortunately it was all true (actually worse once we got the full breakdown from the counsellor).

You are not raising a snowflake and your child’s feelings are justified, please listen to your child and don’t listen to the “teachers and schools can do no wrong”

we were told we would not be able to remove for SATS and they would just reschedule at some point when my child returned so we changed tack, no homework was to be bought home, given back to the teacher. We spoke to the secondary school who informed us that they would do CAT tests when they started but it would all be mixed groups to start.

Please remember you know your child best and do what you feel is right

@Kidsaregrim Thanks - it does seem far too much, and getting the impression via his teacher that she didn't agree with the system either reiterated it. It's also nice to get another reply that doesn't involve a dollop of nastiness! As I said in my previous post, I am not convinced that the same argument can be applied to GCSE's or university (unless he sat one and went to the other before the age of 12....)

Your experience sounds more intense than ours is, but ours feels excessive regardless for a ten year old and would make more sense it if had an impact on secondary but it doesn't appear to. What was the result of all the trouble you had...? Is your DC now doing well?

One aspect, however, that has come up multiple times is that his peers are going though the same (some presumably handling it far better than mine seems to be!) and I don't want him to feel like the odd one out once it's over. I realise that makes little sense when you compare it to my initial post! We can't really play it down any more at home, while also doing the work required, which is a conundrum but I am hoping a chat with his teacher might help with that and how to go on from there. I wasn't aware that they'd have to sit it regardless either.

What @TheNoodlesIncident said.

(Fab username btw! C&H forever!)

Agree with this.

You'll be telling him subconsciously that HE can't cope with it, but others can. Giving him the idea that he suffers worse than others with exam nerves and can't manage what others can.

Support him through it, tell him well done for getting through etc. I don't think even saying "I don't care what you get/it doesn't matter" is ultimately helpful because actually if they do care then it comes across as you dismissing their efforts.

But let him talk about what he wants to, and be led by him. He will find his way of dealing with it, if you let him, and be ready to help how he wants helping. It may not be how you think you would like to be helped.

When dd1 did GCSEs I asked how the exam went and then moved on. I hated talking over exams when I did them, and the last thing I wanted was a post-mortem. About halfway through she said "you don't care about my exams."
Turns out she loves to do a big pick over the exam paper afterwards. So then I let her talk them through in great detail down to how she'd crossed out the number 8 three times on question 2b and then concluded it was right...
Dd2 is more like me and doesn't even want to say good/bad/okay.

@MargaretThursday thank you, this is really helpful.

They are SATs not STATs. I wasn't sure whether to mention that or not. I always like people to let me know if I've said something wrong so thought I'd mention it, apologies if you didn't want to be corrected.

@Paperexcelandpens No probs! Blame the frozen shoulder related insomnia for my lack of proofreading skills!

It's SATs, not STATs.

Don't pull him out. He'll only get the message that he can dodge out of any slightly stressful situation in the future.

This and this is also the kind of thing I was reading at silly o’clock this morning. Along with DS being stressed and not remotely himself, it hopefully explains a lot about my original OP (rather than that I am raising a snowflake who’ll also think he can duck out of GCSE’s etc.)

Your job as a parent is to help build his resilience and support him through challenges. Pulling him out does him no favours. Tell him to try his best and that's the most important thing. Don't make a bigger deal out of this that it is. He has many more challenging things ahead in his life that he will have to face. This is little intro to pressure. It's not a bad thing in my opinion.

@JemimaPyjamas we moved school (actually asked to leave) effectively they were “off rolled” we have an ongoing complaint with the DFE and the teacher was reported to the teacher misconduct as we later found out that there was a physical assault we were unaware of.

the new school is fantastic and rather than homework they do a booster class once a week with activities and it’s fun - just how kids should be taught. They have now passed all the practice papers and are on track to actually do quite well!

it’s really hard when you get horrible responses, I can’t read your thread in its entirety as I know how cruel some people can be and you can’t fully defend yourself or your child without outing yourself!

If you pull him out there will be this big shared experience that everyone else in his class has that he's missed out on. And then when the results come in he'll have missed out again. And you'll be sending him a really clear message that you don't think he's up to it (which is what he fears now isn't it)?

Thank goodness the new school is fantastic! The school my DS is at is great too, thankfully, which I think is yet another reason why the SAT's situation is feeling how it is.

Re the thread, I think the first mistake was asking for 'other views as I am worried and a bit clueless' in AIBU and expecting for more a more constructive approach from the majority of responders. That said, some have offered a good view which I am grateful for but, as ever, some like to be horrible about it too or add some assumptions that are generally nonsense. It's hard to defend, not just due to outing yourself but also due to it being unlikely to make the slightest bit of difference anyway and hence you go round in circles.

Don't do extra work and just tell him it is an opportunity to show what he can do. But you will be proud whatever the results. Pulling him out gives it more importance than you need to.

Some schools are really awful for piling pressure on the children for this, I can only imagine that such schools aren't confident that they've been teaching adequately since Y2. I've heard of children crying with the stress of it all which is horrible! Please reiterate to your ds that the SATs aren't a test of the children per se, they're providing data to show how well the school is working. It's great if he gets good scores, but it's no big deal either way.

Our junior school was great and made light of it to the children. I remember they did do some extra classes but the whole ethos was "this is a test for the teachers so don't worry".

@Ashia No one can prove I did that!!

Before you decide, check with the secondary he's going to whether they use SATS to set children. Some will put them in sets before they do any formal assessments then shuffle them around later in the term. Without SATS to go on he might spend half a term in the wrong group.

@TheNoodlesIncident excellent point to keep telling him. At the moment the stress seems to be on the amount of work he’s constantly doing at home, which is basically the revision.

I have said that it won’t be like this forever and not really mentioned the exam side as much.

However, he’s worried it’ll be like this at ‘high school’ as there is also an emphasis at the school about how Yr6 are the oldest and it seems to work for most of the kids but is having the opposite effect on mine!

He’s assuming that it’ll get even more full on at high school and wants to go back to year 5, telling him that the work is because of the teachers, instead of the kids is a good way of turning it around. My current tactic of telling him it won’t be forever just doesn’t work because they get more and more homework so it looks like I’m talking nonsense.

The scores don’t make any difference once they have moved on to high school, which is why I was initially starting to wonder if it is really worth it.

I know on the exam week, it’s all done very positively, and they do the test and then do things like go to the park.

However, this doesn’t really solve the constant stream of work that has to be finished at home.

@JemimaPyjamas why not just contact the class teacher, explain that he is finding it stressful and that you'll support 30 mins of homework a day but no more. They can't force him to do it.

@Singleandproud as per my second paragraph… Secondly, of course I am going to discuss this with his teacher but I can’t at the moment as it’s the holidays!

It’s between 20-40 mins a day at the moment depending on how he’s finding it, but the issue is it’s 7 days a week, inc in the holidays. For what the end result is to DS it didn’t seem appropriate. Obviously it’s a totally different thing if it was GCSE’s or such like, which is clearly non negotiable!

I think emphasising that it’s for the school rather than the children (he loves his teacher!) and also explaining that due to this we don’t want to make it harder than it needs to be will be a good tactic. I’m not quite sure how that will work if they are all marking each other’s homework, but hopefully myself and his teacher will be able to work out a solution.

My friend has a 17 year old. He just did his mocks and had really bad results.

This isn't out of the ordinary for his year group. They didn't sit GCSEs due to COVID and it's been identified that the whole year across the country is seeing lower results due to poor exam technique due to lack of practice.

Ironically I think pulling your kid out of SATs age 11 is making it into a big deal rather than minimising it and saying it doesn't matter what they get, it's all experience building for the future. It's utterly counter productive because it's effectively saying 'this is a massive big deal you are struggling to cope with and we are going to reinforce that feeling'. It's something they do need to build up resilience with unfortunately. Avoiding the problem only escalates the anxiety.

Then what happens with mock then proper exams
you are doing him no favours whatsoever if anything it would be detrimental

kids take there leads from you I think you are passing your issues on to him

@RedToothBrush I agree with you now. One of my previous posts has links to what I was reading at silly o’clock this morning so you can hopefully see where the initial thought may have come from. The other posts will hopefully also back it up too!

@rwalker I am not ‘passing on my issues’, and my thoughts on your other points are also subsequently covered in my previous posts.

As ever, thank you to those who’ve been constructively helpful.