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

Here's the spellings for those who are interested.

And the link to view the full reading and SPAG papers

I write educational stuff for a living and having had two not particularly academic children (now at secondary, one leaving soon), I will say SATs are written by sadists and have made bugger all difference to anything for my children other than cause upset. Fronted adverbials also please go to hell.

Fair!

Fire carrier - what concerned/concerns me still is/ was the lack of appreciation by teachers of the impact of poor literacy skills on life chances and quality of life not just £££ - mainly Middle class white females with v v little experience of life outside the education system ) - plus the constant labelling of children ( as thick / naughty etc) with little or no regard to any antecedent behaviours - The education system is merely a replication of the capitalist system we are coerced into enduring - without questioning - 👍🏿☘️

Unsubstantiated and bitter sweeping statement number 3 ^^^

The jaunty shamrock at the end doesn’t make you sound any less of an arse, btw.

There's 7 pages of fairly dense text to read and 38 questions to answer, many of which need more than one word answers, require you to scan back through to put things in order, etc. An hour just doesn't seem long enough for children to complete it.

The individual questions picked out by the BBC aren't the problem.

DD wanted to carry on reading the wolf one

I can understand why some children might be confused at first glance but I find it hard to believe that teachers would be! 🙄

It is wasn’t that the questions were too hard, it’s that the test was just far too long. There was too much to read and the text wasn’t broken up. Children didn’t have enough time to skim and scan to find the correct answer/way to word their answer. It shouldn’t be a test of speed. That is very unfair.

I am a teacher. I also have an A* in English Literature GCSE and a degree from Oxford.

I wasn't involved in Year 6 this year but was in the past. I was interested by the furore so tried completing the paper myself.

I found some of the questions confusing. I could easily have scored as low as 46/50. This is because questions 22, 23, 28 and 36 were, in my opinion, confusing. The test should be of children's reading ability, not their understanding of what test writers want to see in their answers.

Yes. Mumsnet users obviously have high tolerance for text. That's the kind of site it is.

We seem to be testing children's ability by selecting for efficient scanners of dull texts.

Scanning is a specific skill. I'm good at it myself. Is it good for children that age, who you'd hope would normally read to reflect and recall? We learned to read, discuss, analyse, precis, write longer form answers. Scanning came later. I find it depressing that we are testing children on shallow and efficient engagement with texts. I hope nobody is telling children this sort of thing is a test of their reading skills.

It's a relatively easy task made difficult by time pressure, so that kids and schools can be marked and sorted easily.

Also

8 - wriggling doesn't mean you have to squeeze in. It doesn't necessarily entail creeping quietly, but it could.

15 - interviewee uses hotspot in two senses - question oversimplified and misleading.

As an adult I know what adults want - an answer that validates the terms of their question.

As a child, I'd have lost faith in adults asking flawed questions on an exam paper and would not have known which answers to choose.

Oh I can assure you there’s othing jaunty or bitter about me Feenie more like experienced,educated, principled and impoverished 👍🏿☘️ My house may be a hovel and my shoes broken but my mind is a palace - thanks to an excellent state education 👍🏿🕊🙏🏽

My DS is in yr6 and he didn't seem phased by them at all. He says he didn't find any of them difficult (whether his results are any good is another matter). And he is far from academically high achiever. He has global developmental delay and was hugely behind with every developmental milestone as a baby/toddler. He's always been assessed by the school as being about a year or so behind with his academic progress. At his old school his teacher refused to enter him for the KS1 SATS because she felt he would have no chance at all and would just find it demoralising.

So it will be very interesting to see how he's done this time. He didn't get the least bit stressed about them, and I doubt he'll be upset if his results aren't great.

I've no objection to SATS/formal testing, I don't think it hurts to get kids used to exams. GCSE's will come around in the blink of an eye, so they'll hopefully be comfortable with the exam concept by then.

I do think some of the English language terms and constructs that they use now are a bit weird, alien to us older generations. But as long as the kids are taught it then I guess that's fine.

Most children that I have taught who say that they didn't find a test hard have ended up with poor results, unfortunately. They are just not at the level required to access the more challenging questions and, therefore, those question types just go over their heads and don't phase them.

My own son had this issues (autism, SPD, GDD). I was grateful that he didn't realise how poorly he did as his anxiety would have go through the roof.

The children that I saw get very upset this year were the children working at greater depth who usually achieve very high marks. They found a few of the questions almost incomprehensible.

I remember being taught scanning in year 6 (oddly one of the lessons that really stands out in my memory), probably in preparation for SATs. My teacher explained that usually he wants us to read carefully and thoroughly but sometimes we need to read quickly and only pick up on the key information.

I think it would make more sense to have more questions per text, and therefore less text to read, if the true purpose of the test is comprehension. Maybe that's just me though!

I've just noticed the amount of signposting available though too. Lots of questions "on page 2 look at", "at the bottom of paragraph 3", "on page 8 XX says xyz".

This, to me, makes it much easier, no?

But surely you still could have got a full mark score after standardisation with 46/50? Isn’t that the point of the standardisation that they look at the full range of marks and then give a % up to 115/120 (I forget now so long ago!). If all children didn’t understand those questions, they would ultimately be negated. Or am I misunderstanding the marking?

No, that's correct.

But how are a supposed team of experts writing questions that are so confusing that well-educated, moderately intelligent adults and, more importantly, even very competent 11-year-olds, can't comprehend them?

It's unfair, and it's pointless.

I'm glad to hear they explained it that way, and it's a useful skill. I hadn't realised how focused these tests are on signposting, scanning and listing. Test practice must make a huge difference. I'm not certain reading practice would have the same effect.

Agree with @Aaarrgg - making a few questions ambiguous and fixing with bell curve isn't good enough.

Incidentally, the style of that first extract set my teeth on edge.

Not enough fuss has been made about the effect the extra bank holiday had on these children, either. It threw mine. A few years ago, they changed up the order of testing because the having the reading test on the Monday affected the results - it takes Y6 a day to get in the swing. So they made the SPAG test the first. An extra bank holiday threw my volatile class - there were multiple behaviour incidents before we settled them. But no one planning the coronation weekend will have given a shit about that. Y6 teachers across the country saw that coming.

According to the BBC it was called "the rise of wolves"

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