To thinks SATs don’t really matter?

[whodawhodaeho]

DD is year 6 and her class teacher( and year head) has told them that if they don’t do well in SATs then they’ll be put with the disruptive, badly behaved kids in ‘big’ school. Ie put in lower sets forever

I have told her this is nonsense - that the new school will assess her themselves up til Oct half term then stream sets for certain subjects (which they do - her DB is there ) and the SATs don’t matter.
And they continually assess and move kids around according to ability/ progress through school terms/ years

YABU - yes they matter, and yes secondary school will pay attention to the results

YANBU - they don’t really matter

SATS are bullshit. They are measuring the school, not the child.

As soon as mine arrived in high school they were assessed and streamed, SATS had no bearing on them whatsoever.

Year 2 SATs are definitely a measure of the schools teaching not the students academic ability.
Year 6 is that plus giving secondary school the baseline of where they should expect each student to be. That being said in your specific case as you know the school doesn't stream sets until they've done their own assessments I really wouldn't worry about it.

And I think it's absolutely ridiculous that any school who uses SATs for setting abilities wouldn't shuffle them round if they find a child is above the set ability in general. Some kids just don't test well.

My eldest child's high school did base their sets on the SAT scores when they first moved up, however, they have since moved them around to different sets based on their abilities they now know they are capable of.

I disagree with the head of year's comment about children who have lower ability. Yes, we are all human but that comment is beyond cruel and extremely shameful coming from a teacher.

My youngest struggles academically but he is one of the most well behaved kids in his class so to categorise his personality based on his academics is out of order and the teacher, in my opinion, should be disciplined for making such a cruel comment!

The teacher needs to think about what have said ,it's not only badly behaved disruptive kids ha are in lower sets,,not every child is academic ,my son is 16 now he starts is GCSE,s next week he's never been academic ,he's also been very ill this year and been in hospital so we are not pressuring at all regarding his exams what will be will be
he is however a very mature lovely young man and I have always been told he's an absolute credit to me so he's certainly not either disruptive or badly behaved

That's really not the case. Ours are separated into 2 wide bands for maths only in Y7 and I think MFL in Y8. That's it. My 16 year old is only in setted for Maths, English and French. My understanding is that full on streaming is very rare in English schools. There's been a huge push towards mixed ability teaching for years now.

This rubbish the head is spouting about children being condemned to disruptive lower sets is nonsense. That is kind of the point of the thread.

‘She might miss out on the extra interventions in year 11 as she is already meeting or exceeding her targets ‘

Not for one second do I think that the results my 10 year old gets this week in SATs are going to matter when she’s 16.

They don't really matter on an individual basis as in nobody will ever ask an adult what they got in their SATS.

However, one of the academy trusts around here use them to put the children into bands with X being the higher achievers and Y being the lower. The Y band children are barred from triple science, MFL at GCSE whatever progress/aptitude yhey show throughout KS3 and must do one non GCSE subject at KS4 (a Cambridge national or btec).

That said my son was in Y band and is all set to study biomedical sciences at university so it hasn't held him back in the long run just really effected his self esteem and none of the boys he was friends with at school with are studying A levels so he has lost that peer group as they have less in common now they all earn on their apprenticeships which is a shame as they are nice boys.

Reading back over all the comments I can see why your education system is in disarray it really really seems to focus on assessment and streaming kids at such a young age, doesn't happen at all in Ireland.

I was thinking this too - Wales don't have SATS either.

Honestly if I were you OP I'd let her do the audition and tell her that SATS are about checking whether the school is doing a good job, not about her. They really have no bearing on how well she will do at GCSE, sounds like your secondary school is a clean slate anyway, if they do their own testing.

I really dislike the culture of piling on the exam pressure at this age, and the idea that lower sets = bad. I always told mine that setting is about grouping kids in a way that helps the teacher teach effectively, so that they can go at the right pace for everyone.

Piony fair enough but judging from the comments here streaming does seem to happen in a lot of schools posters kids are going to

The disruptive, badly behaved kids are not confined to the lower sets. They’re everywhere.

And many will just not be academic ,just because kids are less academic doesn't mean 'they have behavioural issues.

Utter rubbish they get retested at secondary school.

As far as I'm aware, all (state) schools have to base target grades on KS2 SATS, because that is how the secondary school will be measured on its own performance. However, many schools may choose not to put too much weight on the targets generated from SATS, they may choose not to share them with children/parents and they may have have alternative targets that they prefer to emphasise instead. Ultimately, though, the secondary schools will be judged according to the "value added" based on GCSEs.

DD forthcoming secondary only does sets for English and Maths - the rest is mixed ability except for MFL native speakers - the kids fluent in French, German and Spanish or heritage languages have classes separate to the rest.

‘However, one of the academy trusts around here use them to put the children into bands with X being the higher achievers and Y being the lower. The Y band children are barred from triple science, MFL at GCSE whatever progress/aptitude yhey show throughout KS3 and must do one non GCSE subject at KS4 (a Cambridge national or btec).’

That can’t be true! ‘Barred’ from MFL or triple science because of a test you had at 10/11?? Bullshit.
A lot of primaries don’t even DO MFL in any depth so how in earth can you tell if a child is going to be good at Spanish or French because their English grammar paper was below par???

Tell your dd that Sats don't matter as far as she is concerned. All she can do is what she can do and it is very unfair of the teacher to be putting pressure on her.

As a secondary school teacher Sats are used as an indicator but have taught students who have clearly been coached to death by primary school teachers and cannot actually perform at that level in real life. Likewise if students are bright and doing well but had a low sats score I tell them to ignore the nonsense target they have been given and aim higher.

They are a crude tool for assessing if a child has underperformed, if they are we then look at why, is there an unmet need? do they just hate our subject? is there something social going on? etc

I am a teacher. They really don't matter

All secondary schools I have worked in use them as a baseline to monitor progress but don't set until their own assessments have been made

She might miss out on the extra interventions in year 11 as she is already meeting or exceeding her targets

Teachers don't stop bothering to support and challenge Y11 kids who they know can do better, just because they are hitting a target based on a test in English and Maths from Y6 tho, surely?

Things change so much at secondary - DD is a summer baby, was behind everyone else for most of primary and ended up maybe towards the top of the bottom half in Y6. She only really caught up in Y8-9, got 14 A* at GCSE and is now doing 4 A levels and eyeing up Oxbridge.

DS on the other hand (winter baby) was top of everything at primary, fell away in secondary and got BCD at AS. He worked hard and did better in Y13 and got to the uni he wanted but anything can happen at secondary and Y6 attainment has very little to do with it imo. (They went to the same secondary school and had many of the same teachers.)

It is absolutely true.

It is a flight path model. Children are either put on the global pathway or the EBAC pathway.

Those on the global pathway must do combined science, English, maths, RE then chose Geography or history, an additional GCSE (art, citizenship, business studies, photography or computer science) and either Cambridge National Sports Science or BTEC Hospitality, dance, drama,music or media.

Those on the EBAC pathway must do Triple Science,Maths, English, French or Spanish, History, Geography or RE and a choice of 3 other GSCEs either from the Global list or the other humanities.

This flightpath is based on the KS2 SATS as this is what schools data is based on.

I don't agree with the system and it cause my son a lot of self esteem issues as I said.

You cannot tell me it is bullshit just because it is a different system to the school your child will attend. You should be grateful the school you deal with are more holistic less data driven.

I utterly detest the amount of stress and pressure they've shovelled on to the kids for no reason whatsoever.

SATs are supposed to be a measure of the school's teaching, but they've pushed their accountability and responsibility for that square on to the children. This may be controversial, but I actually think that getting children to revise and hothousing them for their SATs is full-on blatant cheating, as it's meant to be about NORMAL teaching standards and not artificially boosting them for a short period. The government guidelines say that children should be taught how to sit the SATS (i.e. understand basic exam procedure) - nowhere does it say that they have to be hothoused so as to artificially boost the school's scores.

If you look at OFSTED inspections, the whole idea of them is that schools get very little advance notice - because it's meant to be evaluating ONGOING standards and not just designed so that schools could be reckless and slapdash for years as their norm, if they so desired, and then spend a few months tightening up and cramming so that they give the right snapshot impression when they learn that they're going to be OFSTEDed in 6 months' time. SATs should be the same.

Even in our area, where we have a three-tier system, so the Y6 kids aren't moving schools for another two years anyway, they still actively choose to load the mental stress on to the children for no reason whatsoever. It's really, really nasty and most categorically not designed for the benefit of the children and their good mental health.

GCSEs and A-Levels are completely different as they not only come when the kids are significantly older, but they are designed for the child as an individual to identify their abilities and explore their own future options. Making kids revise for SATs is deliberately getting them to cover up any school-wide issues from being identified so that they can be properly addressed - it's effectively turkeys voting for Christmas.

Daughter's teacher (year 6)has said they are irrelevant. Her brother is a secondary school headmaster and he told her that at his school they don't look at the results at all. Thankfully there's been no drama about them from daughter's school

I've got one doing sats this year. School have been doing booster sessions and revision but haven't pushed anything else like homework etc. They have been brilliant with the kids and made sure there is no pressure. I have a slightly anxious year 6 and he has a 1-1 with him due to this, he seemed absolutely fine going in this morning and I have maintained that 'your best is all I ask for' and he will get rewarded for his effort from myself regardless.

It would be a very poor secondary school to rely on the results of a 10 year old to predict how they will do at 16. Luckily mine is going to an outstanding and supportive secondary.

This is so true. DS15 is in top set and there are disruptive kids in the class just like any other class. But mostly what I relate to here is that getting good marks in SATs sets you up for constantly trying to keep up with massively high expectations for a full five years. DS15 got expected 9s for everything. Everything! And any time he falls slightly below his target he's disappointed. I hate seeing him like this and try my best to convince him not to worry about it and that 9s are almost impossible to achieve, but he does feel the pressure. So much so that I told DS11 last night (jokingly, but maybe only half jokingly) only to do reasonably well...

DS11 is completely fed up with his SATs preparations, and has found year 6 really boring, when it should be the fun final year of primary school. I've told him that back in the olden days my last year of primary was spent doing a bit of work in the morning then rounders on an afternoon. It was such a fun year, and it's really sad that today's Y6s are so bogged down with tests instead.

I have bright children with specific learning difficulties and have always been clear with them that SATs are for measuring schools on a narrow section of the curriculum and are of no great importance to them personally.

I used to teach a foundation subject and often had the problem of unrealistic SATs based targets on unmotivated, uninterested students who'd been overcoached in English skills and had little prior knowledge or talent in my subject. Data culture is deeply flawed when applied in this way.

DS should have been eligable for additional time for any of the 3 of his additional needs, and primary school refused to implement any reasonable adjustments because they thought he was "doing well enough". He didn't meet all the targets they set because he was "anxious" (which is why ASD can require extra time to ease the pressure... plus slow writing and processing speeds from dyslexia and dyspraxia...) I didn't kick up a stink with the primary school because ultimately he's gone to a sensible secondary school who assess things for themselves and while the primary have shot themselves on the data, the secondary's value added will be better and there'll be less pressure at GCSE on him. He won't be in sets until he starts GCSEs in y9. His secondary believes that it's unhelpful to pigeonhole learners too soon, particularly for lower sets where it's harder to work up.

Having taught sets, set 5 was usually lovely, smaller, supported groups. Disruptive fools can be found in any set, although it's not uncommon for set 4 to be a difficult combination of below average, and some under performing idle time wasters. We did have some discretion in the setting and were able to tweak class combinations to avoid dumping grounds and push some with potential up. SENs can be found in any set, and the association with poor behaviour is lazy, outdated and damaging to well behaved children whose needs are overlooked.

GCSEs and A-levels are different in that they measure learning across the curriculum and are used to gatekeep access to further courses and jobs. Students have also had more discretion of subject choice and independent learning skill.