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 for schools - I made sure my kids (now in their 20's) were not pressurised one bit for them. There's enough pressure on kids anyway without adding these to it.

I've got a DD is year 7 and one doing SATs this week in Year 6 - and NEITHER time has the school put this kind of pressure on the kids, they've been prep'ing at school for weeks and sent bits of info for parents out but the general theme is that they should just do their best! As for moving to secondary - the SATs made no difference whatsoever in 'grading' for Year 7 - this happens at the end of year 7 with their end of year exams (which DDy7 is currently doing) and the results will determine 'sets' for next year (year 8). My guess would be that, as the school are ranked and graded based on what levels the kiddos attain, they are more concerned about their own rankings than they are the kiddos welfare! Have you seen the fuss today about the literacy test yesterday, apparently it was the worst/hardest one most teachers have seen and even excellent readers were struggling with it! These tests are definitely NOT the be all and end all - they are simply a means of the establishment patting themselves on the back for a job well done (you know, like cramming exam prep and revision down 10 and 11 year olds throats and introducing them to unreasonable stress) when what they should be doing is enjoying school, learning new stuff every day and finding out who they are and what they're individually good at!

Lol I did SATs in year 2, 6 and early in yr 8. I then did some early GCSEs in year 9 and then regular GCSEs in years 10 and 11. Then AS exams then A Level.

It was shit to constantly have exams. In fact in 13 years of school (including A levels) I had 8 years of exams. Followed by five years of exams at uni and professionally.

I have to say while it was stressful at first it made me absolutely belting at exams. So maybe just see it as good practice?

Yep all we got when we asked how they had gone was - “alright” I think this response indicates a great success both for home and school life. My DS actually started the week saying he was excited for this week - he suffers from anxiety. I love the way his school has handled this.

I think it depends on your secondary school's procedure for streaming more than anything to how much the SATs matter.

The school my DS will be attending absolutely uses SATs results to decide which sets they will be in for Maths and English from day 1. My DH had said to my son to try hard so he didn't end up in a lower set as he did and it meant it was very disruptive and as a result he really struggled with maths.

Therefore the SATs do matter to a certain degree. Having said that they are a very small snapshot of what the children learn and are capable of. Trying to convey that to my DS has been hard though, he has been stressed this week and it has been very hard to see.

My DD’s school do use data for initial streaming. But they don’t stream everything and much is mixed ability - so they say. But when my DD1 started high school it was 2020 and Covid had cancelled sats. The school made them all sit the CAT tests to be able to assess for proper streaming. They did say these tests were due to not having sat their SATs so it will be interesting this year as my DD2 is currently sitting here and going to the same school in September. She is bright and predicted greater depth for most things but that’s not a given. After yesterday’s reading paper - which she did finish and said was fine - it could go either way this time round.

I coached my older kids for their SATs (I know, I know) and they all got the highest marks achievable. Yay, go us.
How it ended up further down the line was that their SATs were used to form their target GCSE grades in secondary school. So my children were constantly ‘under-achieving’ because they weren’t going to get 9s. Not good. I won’t be making that mistake with my younger ones!

Obviously SATS matter, to the extent that if you do astonishingly badly in them, it is unlikely you are actually ready for secondary school, as it is an indication you have extremely inadequate English and maths skills and will likely miss a lot of the year 7 curriculum due to having to attend remedial classes in primary-level English and/or maths. For parents of children of around average ability or above who have been well enough taught to do OK in their SATS, exactly how well they do is considerably less important. However, if all, or a substantial proportion of children nationally are doing less well in SATS now than pre-covid, this will likely have an impact on the entire cohort’s education at the start of secondary, as more time than usual will have to be spent identifying and plugging the gaps in their primary education - by teachers not trained to teach the primary curriculum.

It’s 15 years ago now but we did SATS in primary school and it had absolutely no bearing on the set you were in in high school, sets didn’t come into play until year 9 or maybe even 10 when you had done your options for GCSEs. I don’t think they’re particularly important if she was graded low but outperforming in her set they would move her to the appropriate set. They did all of our classes in tutor groups the first at least 2 years of high school except food / design / the one where you sow haha

I think you’ve got a crappy school if they base their GCSE targets on SATs, that’s crazy practice. A school with any merit will do their own testing in year 7 to start streaming kids.

My number 3 son did better in his SATS than his older brother, his teacher at Junior school said he was a little grafter, he is also dyslexic
at secondary school he was put in the class with kids with behaviour problems, gradually lost contact with his mates and within two years had behaviour problems to fit in, not exactly Rocket science
it took ten years for him to regain his self esteem
he is 29 now, has a good job that he enjoys, a girlfriend and a stepdaughter
if we drove past the school even now he says that his life went wrong when he went there

It's not up to the school. The expected grades for GCSE are set as an external measure and the school cannot change them. They are held accountable to them.

I really wish people would read the full thread rather than posting pages of misinformation.

I think SAT's are important. Irrespective of tests they do to set them at the start of year 7, or re-set them afterwards. The fact is SAT's are recorded, and used as a trajectory for progress all the way through, checking that they meet expectations at GCSE.

Are you sure they didn’t use CATs?

SATS aren’t a target predictor. This is known.

They are not used for this.

But I've heard they use the results for the SATS core subjects to give the trajectory for other subjects that have nothing to do with core subjects? My daughter is bad at English but competes at a high level in a sport so is great at PE. Would her poor SATs affect her predicted GCSES grade for PE?

Don't progress 8 scores start off with SAT grades?

It is not known: you are wrong.

The SATs scaled scores attained by the children are combined (along with the generated writing scaled score) and the result is used to determine the expected rate of progress between the attainment at the end of Y6 and the attainment at the end of Y11. This formed the accountability measure, Progress 8, by which all state-funded secondary schools are judged.

CAT tests are for internal school use only and have no influence at all, in any form, over the external set progress and attainment expectations.

Thay absolutely are!

Is this quote not true then? :

"Why are SATs important?
SATs are used to monitor the progress of children during their primary school years. It is also a way of checking that they are learning the government set syllabus and meeting what ‘experts’ deem to be the appropriate knowledge at this age. Furthermore, the SATs test results are used to group children in secondary school and predict their GCSE results. Therefore, if your child scored a 100 in the SATs then they would be expected to get a 4 or 5 (the old C grade) at GCSE. If your child scored higher than 100 then it indicates their potential for a higher GCSE grade."

Progress 8 is a measure of progress for schools. Not individual students.

@JenWillsiam

link

For the school. For individual students they mean absolutely nothing.

Don't worry. These cost us sooo much stress. Pressure on schools. Not useful.

And another link

they are for the school and measuring progress. From a student perspective they’re meaningless.

The only useful thing is that if a child starts to fail to make progress you can look back but that’s pretty unusual for it to actually help. From a prospects point of view nonsense.