Is this normal for Year 6 re: sats?

[TweezerMay]

My dd is my first child so I haven’t experienced this before, so don’t know if this is standard for all primaries.

DD came home today and said that from now until the tests, every afternoon is given over to sats preparation. I’m taking it with a pinch of salt because she could have got the wrong end of the stick, but is this really what happens in year 6? They’re already doing (voluntary but encouraged) after school sats sessions and we’ve had meetings about stuff they’ll be expected to do as homework and what books to get.

They’re ten and eleven years old! It’s a middle of the road primary, not high achieving or anything. AIBU to think cramming it in at the loss of other subjects and making it the be-all and end-all is a bit crap?

Yes SATs matter to both the school and to the child in my opinion. I have had 2 children go through secondary. My first child was considered average, achieving what they were meant to. My second child aced their year 6 SATs.

All the talk of moving sets in secondary can only happen if they have children who also need to move down. It is better to start off in a higher set and try to remain there than start lower and to hope someone else is performing worse than you in a set with a higher achieving cohort.

My child had no problem moving up sets in secondary. Please don't put fear into parents when none is needed. Sets where adjusted every term.

Only 60% though pass all SATs and it is kept around that - there isn’t a fixed pass mark either all of the scores and ranked and then the 100 fixed from there so a certain amount are always going to fall under the expected standard

awfuk thing to do at that age

That's what is was like for my kids' in year 6, they often didn't do PE and missed out on other things because they were studying for SATS. It's just a local community primary and there's one high school in the town that everyone gets into so not competitive or anything.

I feel they missed out on a lot of things like music, languages, history etc because it was all about the SATS. When they were over it was more relaxed and the had their residential and end of year play but there wasn't much left of the school year by then.
Mine both hated year 6 and found it really boring, which is sad.

Edited to add that the teachers put a lot of pressure of them saying SATS were very important for high school but it wasn't even true. My dd is in Yr 9 and still moans about when they got to Yr 7 and the high school did their own week of test to decide which classes they went into.

Normal I'm afraid. Going back to when my children did them and they were doing revision/studying every afternoon and I think they started before Christmas. And they did after school study (it was offered every day but mine only went twice a week).
It's rubbish and no better when they do it at secondary school. I always tried to assure them it didn't matter but they were obviously being told by school it did.
Not much you can do except making sure your child also has down time and watching them for stress. You also don't have to send her to after school sessions (I wish I hadn't).

At your child's school. The other local school to me has been reprimanded by Ofsted for not pushing higher ability children and focusing on the grades 2 and 3 which the head happily admits. Other more able children sit in their sets as they are reaching their expected level.

My eldest was predicted 4 grades lower than they achieved in both maths and English based on SATs and their actual GCSE grades. The system wouldn't let his SLT maths teacher override his predicted grade due to expected progress 8 scores set by the school.

I agree with this. At DS's Secondary school there wasn't that much movement, maybe a few kids per year - plus you had to be consistently scoring very high over a considerable amount of time for them to think about moving you.

Yep and it’s ludicrous. The UK education system is one big exam factory.

My son was in Year 6 last year and there was a big emphasis on SATs. Extra support before and after school, and mock tests, etc.

Contrary to most people here and my friends, I did think it was actually pretty useful- it really improved my son's written English (which had been worryingly dire), handwriting and maths. And the discipline of it seems to have helped him settle into the greater structure at secondary school.

I got some of the practice sats booklets with answers in them and we worked through some together at home.

What is frustrating about it though is they have to get absolutely spot-on answers to get the marks, and if it is a multi part answer, they only get the three marks (say) if they get all three parts right. That does not seem a particularly fair or accurate grading system. But it does mean giving them practice is helpful so they learn what's needed.

My son didn't get particularly stressed by it but was v glad when he's done the last one and then they had some really fun school trips and a school play they rehearsed and presented at end of term. Which made a great finale to the year.

But surely that will be a good thing as they get a chance to go over what they've missed and understand it better second time around?

It certainly worked that way for my son. He was struggling a lot with written English before and came on in leaps and bounds that final year of primary school

DS's school didn't do this - they had a handful of practice sessions but nothing out of school hours and certainly not every day. They don't have the most stellar SATs results though and it's not a sought-after school. The most oversubscribed schools with the best results in the borough do take SATs more seriously and we have relatives at them who had a similar regime. I think most parents who send their dcs to the more academic schools know this and encourage it - it's obvious that's how they're able to get results like that.

An important thing SATs helps with is getting them to read and answer the question.

This may seem obvious, but I'm an academic and even at PG taught level, some students still don't actually follow the Assessment Brief they are set.

My son really struggled with not giving a far more convoluted answer than actually required - and so not getting the marks.

I'd recommend the SATs practice books you can buy (and if you're fairly old like me, you will also get a crash course in English Grammar and language terminology- we just didn't do it when I went through school!)

Just to add, this was a kid who missed an entire term of Year 4 and an entire term of Year 5 due to Covid lockdowns. Autism meant no homeschooling, because bringing school into the home, her safe space, went very badly wrong. But, as she was safe at home and smart enough to catch up, she wasn't allowed to attend school either because the lockdown places were limited and there were kids whose parents worked out of the home even during lockdown, and kids for whom home wasn't a safe place and they really did need to be in school for as much of the day as possible.

Still managed to 'catch up', despite returning to school being incredibly difficult after both lockdowns. Also managed to pass the 11+ and win a place at the local grammar school at the start of Year 6, with only about 12 sessions of low-key 11+ practice with a local and friendly tutor as preparation. So this kid could miss a load of schooling, have barely any 11+ tutoring, and was still able to walk into that school and take and pass the 11+. But she couldn't take her SATs. The difference between the two? We placed zero pressure on her for the 11+. It was an annoying thing that needed to be done if she wanted to go to the grammar with her two friends... but no big deal. There were other schools if the 11+ didn't work out. And the tutor was incredibly laid back, too. But we couldn't protect DD from the pressure-filled school environment.

The damage was done. She managed less than a week at the much-wanted grammar school before all of the past trauma came bearing down on her. We're still waiting for some sort of specialist provision, nearly three years on. Our intelligent, academically-capable child probably won't get any GCSEs any time soon, certainly not as many as she might have done and at age 16. And the thing that made it all come tumbling down really was the pressure of SATs. It's so wrong. By contrast, the Year 2 SATs were no issue at all! Because they never even told the kids they were doing tests, they were just doing 'fun' worksheets. And they certainly never told them their personal results! That was another toxic feature of the Year 6 SATs - telling each child individually how they had performed. So the kids immediately headed to the playground and all compared scores. Bunch of them left feeling like academic failures, even if they tried their best, at age 11. It's criminal. EFFORT should be what matters to growing children and young people, not results.

Yes sadly it’s normal. My dd didn’t have any IT lessons at all in Y6, because school ran out of time to teach it. The focus on spag and maths and English was mostly unnecessary for her — she was already “working above” - so her teacher did give her and some other more able students some separate work - they sat outside the classroom with the HT supervising while the other kids were drilling says practise.

Deathly dull.

After SATS it went to the other extreme - catching up on science and history and rest of curriculum as much as possible . So basically no maths/English after May. Quite barmy.

This is surely not what govt wanted when they set up SATS!

@BlibBlabBlob thats terribly sad. I am sorry that after lockdown, this is what the education system did to your dd and I hope she finds a path through to a happy and successful future

I can relate to this. As I mentioned upthread, my daughter has been offered a scholarship place at a selective independent secondary for next year. She wasn’t stressed about the entrance exam or interviews at all, because we put no pressure on her. In contrast, she’s coming home from school stressed and anxious about the SATs, because the teachers are putting so much pressure on.

DD didn't sit SATS due to the Pandemic, and her secondary school seemed to manage just fine, and she moved up sets in Year 8 and 9. I'm not British so went through a schooling system where there wasn't this factory like focus on exams at such a young age and this weird concept that achievement at age 11 is going to determine their entire life. I did middling in school, and then once I found myself interested at University did exceedingly well. My DS is now in Year 6 and bored senseless with all the SAT tests that they do weekly and are assigned as homework, and I don't blame him. I will tell him not to overly concern himself with them, and their weird scoring system where even though he's achieving above the 100-110 mark he's letting himself down apparently?

As a former year 6 TA, your DD is most likely telling the truth. As soon as they're back after the Christmas holidays, it's all systems go for SATs preparation. It's one of the reasons I left.

The problem ultimately is the league tables and judgments made based on exam results. Teachers are stressed because they are judged on the results, the school adds more pressure and scrutiny because they are judged on the results. This adds other problems too later on, a very able child with parents who have a poor attitude towards education may perform average on sats, meaning at secondary "good enough" to keep them on track requires very little effort and they won't get pushed to meet their true potential. Equally, an average child who is hothoused in yr6 and gets excellent results will have high threshold for progress meaning they'll have to continue at that insane level for the next 5 years to look like they are making the right kind of progress for them. This is rarely feasible meaning you get those children who do their homework, try their best in school but it still looks like they're underachieving.

Try telling an anxious not overly academic 10 year old to "suck it up buttercup". The sats prep is shit, ours do booster sessions in the morning and for kids like my dd (who are not where they are expected to be) they are taken out of class to do intervention.

Once the Sats roll around they have a preparation breakfast so kids can "start the day strong" 😩

I love the general sneering about SATs and a school's preparation for them but how many parents look at a school's SATs scores when applying for a school or even when looking for a house? Much of this testing is to allow league tables for parents to peruse, it used to be the case that if one lived in an area then the better schools were already known, long before SATs and Ofsted!

My DS took SATS last year. Luckily, his school (achieving results well above national average) handled it very well. Yes, after autumn half term most of the weekly homework was doing SATS practice for English and Maths, but they still taught a full curriculum. On the whole, homework was actually a lot less stressful than previously as it was all so predictable (and rather boring). But, generally, kids were not stressed out by it and school did not put a huge amount of emphasis on it either. His current - very good - secondary school set students according to SAT results and an entry test done during transition day, but these sets are fluid.

Not agreeing with the approach towards SATS does not equal ‘sneering’. It’s an opinion, based on the experience of our children.

We don't do this at my school as we don't agree with teaching to the test. They do practice papers every half term and then go through them in lessons but otherwise we teach the year 6 curriculum.

SATs determine children’s level of ability (compared to age -related expectations and starting ability in KS1). Maintaining or exceeding expectations gets the school higher rankings.
Secondary schools are also measured by how many children reach, exceed or do not meet that predicted ability when they finish school.
If your child has “good “ SATs results , their secondary school is likely to try very hard to keep them at that high level as it impacts the school rating if they do not meet the predicted (based on SATS.
Get good SATs results = likely to be pushed to get good GCSEs and so it goes on.