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

It sounds an appropriate test from what I have seen here.

I'm pleased you make this point @Feenie !!! We have not seen the whole test and these might be bad examples.

Also the whole point is not everyone is going to get every one right. The schools shouldn't be putting so much pressure on the kids that they cry. It should just be a fun quiz.

A fun quiz that ranks school in league tables?

Contradiction in terms, surely.

Y6 DD is at private school so didn't sit SAT's but I've shown them to her and she thought they were very straightforward. She said they were much easier than the entrance exams she's just taken for private secondary schools. I'm wondering how much of this is teachers using this for political leverage, it's a worry to me that Y6 children found these difficult and stressful.

@fajitaaa like I have said I haven't seen the question so I don't know how the world "state" relates to it.
@TokyoStories I don't know how many 10/11 year olds are hot on North American geography.
Many adults don't know the difference between Washington State and Washington DC, or that there is both a New York State and New York City or that New Mexico is not the same as Mexico.

@Needmorelego but the answer is in the question, ‘the state of Texas’. It’s irrelevant whether they know what a state is or not. It doesn’t ask, for example, ‘are Washington DC and Washington state the same place?’ which yes, would be testing geographical knowledge rather than reading comprehension.

@TokyoStories ok. As I said - I haven't seen the question so I don't know how it's worded.

@Needmorelego they don't need to know a single thing about American geography. The answer is written right there for them (as it is in all comprehensions).

In which American state is the Congress Avenue Bridge found?

Austin is the capital city of the state of Texas in the USA

@edwinbear ok that makes sense.

I've organised SATs at my school for years and am very involved in preparing the children. I dont agree the questions quoted were too hard. They are typical questions. A child will know to scan for a key word like "state" in order to locate the answer. They are not meant to be general knowledge questions.

I do think the text itself seemed more dense / longer than usual. Some of our kids found they didn't have time to finish when they have been able to with past papers.

But if necessary, the pass mark (and all scaled scores) will be lowered to account for this. So why the fuss?

If they can't answer those questions (only saw the BBC ones) they are really not going to have any chance at the 11+. I do despair with the level of reading/comprehension nowadays as kids spend far too much time with eyes on screen rather than on paper in books.

It will be interesting to see GCSE/A results this year now they are going to be fairly marked rather than overmarked as seen in past couple of years.

I saw the two questions on bbc breakfast this morning and thought they were straightforward. However, very aware I’m an adult not 10 so it’s hard for me to judge if a 10 year old would find them difficult. My children are much younger. However, it would concern me a lot if my children’s teachers, and headteacher found them hard as they seem to be saying, I wouldn’t really want someone teaching my children who didn’t seem to have basic literacy skills. Sorry if that sound harsh 🙈

Just to be a bit clearer for others who haven't seen the whole question:

Question: In which American state is the Congress Avenue Bridge found?

Text: By day the Congress Avenue Bridge in the city of Austin could hardly look more normal: a grey, dreary city-centre road bridge. By night, it plays host to one of the most amazing shows nature has to offer......Austin is the capital city of the state of Texas in the USA.

I'd be too embarrassed as a teacher to admit I couldn't work that out.

The questions were fine. I don't get the fuss. People clearly don't understand how grade boundaries work either- if the test was too long for the time then everyone would have the same experience so it will cancel each other out. I don't agree with sats though and when my child is that age they won't be doing them.

I’m going to believe the teachers on this. Asking your child that single question at home is completely different to them reading it in a a much bigger piece of fairly complex text under time pressure, then pulling out the information.

if teachers thought it was too
much, then it was too much. I can see why 10/11 year olds might get mixed up with 2 words around eating too, again - ask them direct and maybe okay, but buried in a much bigger article where they’re finding lots of words trick-ish … different.
DD ran out of time, and guessed towards the end. She’s a very fluent reader with a big vocabulary- I’m sure she’s fine but many kids would not have been.

Hatchet job by the BBC - they’ve picked three of the easier questions and made teachers look ridiculous.

My understanding was that the amount of reading required would take an average reader so long that there wasn't time to answer the questions, not that the questions were too hard.

The full text should be an accessible read to all backgrounds too. They can ask about the USA but why, when they could also have asked about the UK, and made it more accessible to a greater demographic.

Article re word count and time to read/answer questions

https://www.tes.com/magazine/analysis/primary/why-years-sats-reading-paper-was-so-difficult

Everyone saying "we haven't seen the full test" is aware there is a direct link in the BBC piece to the paper, right?

I don't agree with the media hype, but from what I've seen reading the papers at a typical 11 year old reading speed would have taken half the exam time.

That isn't a fair assessment in my opinion.

That doesn't assess someone's comprehension skills. It's an assessment of reading speed.

Already on here today there's been a thread of people saying 'it's not that bad MY child could have done it and so could any child who has done the 11+". If an end of KS2 test couldn't be done by the people who've put their children in tutoring for selective education then there'd be an even bigger problem.

I don’t think the questions seem overly difficult, but it seems the paper was too long.

The skills demonstrate for information retrieval is key words and scanning. The children should be scanning for the key word ‘state’ and then they will find the answer. They don’t need to know about American geography. I’m quite concerned by the primary teachers’ comments here.

I always remember the first essay I had to write in my College of Education back in the late '60s was Without Problems There Can Be No Growth, if no-one is ever challenged there can be no progress, we all face difficulties with new ideas. Any teacher will tell you about that wonderful lightbulb moment when the penny drops for a pupil

Maybe rather than implying the texts should be shorter or they should have more time children should be encouraged to read more at home and get off their devices.