SATs 2023 English Questions - were they really difficult?

[BDutton]

The BBC just shared some questions from this year's English SATs. Do you think they were hard and/or misleading?
Should the answers be so dumbed down as to clearly offer just ONE OBVIOUS answer to a question?
Are the children meant to really KNOW facts, or infer information from the text, which clearly gives clues (such as Texas is the state, since the text mentions "the state of Texas" and "the city of Austin", etc.)
And finally, if the SATS purpose is to measure progress and identify areas of help, isn't it what they are doing?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-65624697

My DS sat that paper last week and got all of the questions in the article correct (I asked him what he put, I didn't say "Did you put X?"). His overall comment was that he only just had time to finish, though, which is unusual for him.

Spoke about this to one of my sons who is now in secondary. It seems he got similar questions in year 6 and they need to get used to these type of questions as they just get harder in Year 7 tests. I tend to agree with him.

I don’t think it was problematically hard. It was just far too long. It’s meant to test comprehension, not speed.

What stood out for me, was the quote, from a teacher, that the teachers themselves were confused, found the questions difficult. If that is really true, then I am at the very least, somewhat dismayed!

I didn't believe them at all, many of the comments made were made for political reasons, especially the ramble from the Head in Cheshire. My grandson did these tests last week and he said that the English was no harder than he had expected it to be, he's an articulate well-read boy but English isn't his main strength.

No.

DS is in Y2 and just did the KS1 Sats. I asked him the 3 questions from the KS2 SATS in the paper this morning and he got them all right and said they were not difficult.

If the teachers are confused by this, I despair for the education system.

YANBU

The answer is Texas but the teacher told us it was likely children would not be familiar enough with American geography to know that Austin is not a state.

The whole point is it’s a reading test. It clearly says ‘the city of Austin’ and ‘the state of Texas’, what does geographical knowledge have to do with it? You’re not going to be familiar with the ins and outs of everything when you read it, which is why it’s important to read it carefully to make sure you understand.

My DD has had to complete a SATs question workbook for her homework this year. Honestly, I found many of the reading questions far too vague but expecting an exact answer when there were many possible answers to the question. I'm educated, well read, always been good at English, but I got lots of the answers 'wrong.'

The UK is on a downward slide across so many things.

It now appears that tests must be super easy and accessible to even newborn babies.

Standards need to be going up and not down. We must prepare our children to help keep this country a first world country. Other countries are outperforming us and before long we will be left behind.

Exactly. I really didn’t understand that point. They presumably picked that text as it’s not common knowledge to children so they had to read all the text to answer.
The language point about consume etc. I know when mine was coming up to 11 plus (grammar area) children needed to read widely and read classics so they had the vocabulary. Verbal reasoning was often spot the odd one out so know that 3 of the 4 words have similar meaning.
As with any test I’d assume some questions are harder to challenge more able.

My yr 6 didn't find the SATS any more difficult than the many, many, many practice papers they've been doing all year. I don't think SATS are to identify where individual kids have made progress or need help though are they? Don't they just test that the school have taught the majority well enough? (Our secondary don't stream kids based on SATS, no streaming until yr 8) My own child is fine with tests and didn't get stressed but so many did, and school in yr6 is all about practice papers over and over again just seems like a pointless way to spend your last year of primary. Now SATS are over, creative writing and art are back for their final few weeks thank goodness.

Genuinely can't see the problem with them.

Have a look at 11+ or private school entrance exams if you think these are hard.

There will always be some pupils who will struggled (one of my own will fall in this camp) The test should not accommodate those few at the expense of the average-able who can do it.

Yes if they can't understand the test, how the hell are they teaching?!?

Yes it was hard, I’ve just been through the paper and it’s harder and longer than the many previous Sats papers we looked at. My very able child couldn’t finish it. Many of the able children in his class didn’t finish either

Mine’s yr12 now. But her secondary used them to set a target that stayed with them until end - hers was 7.8. So if she only got a 7 (A) in a subject it colour coded on report as not meeting expectations. One of her mates had full marks in SATS so hers was even higher.
Once you got your head around it was fine but on first glance it appeared she was failing despite getting nothing less than an A. She needed an 8 (A) to meet expectations and 9 (A*) to exceed.
Other schools targeted interventions in Maths and English at yr7 who hadn’t met required standard.

The timing thing sounds deliberate.
That was 11+ reading. With longer time lots of children could pass. But they were wanting ones who could do it under time pressure. So fast, very able readers.
A time pressured test also highlights if school have taught exam techniques like moving on and guessing but answering everything if you are running out of time.

They don't look overly difficult questions.

If lots of children didn't finish then the texts were too long. The average child should be able to finish and perhaps have a little bit of checking over time.

I also think it's important that the lower ability children do get a chance to show what they can do too. There needs to be some straightforward text and questions to give these children a chance to feel they managed at least part of it.

Teachers really shouldn't have struggled to work out the answers themselves. Perhaps consumed and feeding both being accepted answers would be a little uncertain as I'd normally be looking for just 1 answer.

I haven't seen the question but unless they have studied America in a geography lesson some children might not know what "state" means.
They will know what "city" is but we don't have "states" in the UK so 10/11 year olds might not understand what the question was asking.
Why couldn't the question be about a UK County and City?

I can't imagine there's many 10/11 year old who's never heard of a state in the context of the USA Especially considering how much TV is American.

who've*

The questions stated in the article are not at ALL representative of the kind of questions staff found ambiguous in the test. Y6 teachers on social media are furious at how this makes us look.

Anything that makes 10 year olds cry and become anxious is wrong. Especially bearing in mind these children missed a lot of school during the pandemic and are still catching up

The texas question isn't silly. It says very clearly to read both paragraphs and in the second paragraph it gives the answer!

It says The State of Texas" in the text.they don't need to know what one is.

Having seen the article on BBC News earlier, I have to say I'm a bit taken aback by the furore on how hard the test was. Obviously they're only showing part of it and I appreciate that the time constraint was a difficulty for most kids including mine, but these questions don't look too hard at all. I can't understand the comment from the teacher saying it's unfair to ask children to name the state as Texas if they haven't done any American geography - the answer is clearly there in the text. The other two questions mentioned are quite straightforward as well. I'm pretty confident my ds will have got these correct, not to blow any trumpets, but I think it's fair to expect most Y6 kids to be able to cope with what they're being asked to find here. And if the teachers are having trouble with this level of difficulty, well.....