Bad SATs Results

[Dramatic]

Our local school just released their SATs results, my friend has a child in year 6 and she shared a photo of her son's results and on the bottom it had the schools results with the pass rates for each subject in percentages.

Maths 32%
Reading 41%
Grammar 40%

Now I'm not one to think that test results are the be all and end all but these seem to be incredibly low. DH thinks I should just disregard them but AIBU to think about not sending our daughter there? It's just a Junior school so we have options to send her elsewhere in Year 3.

I think you need to find out if there is a reason why they did so badly and if this was a poor performing cohort for whatever reason. If it's like this year on year then personally it wouldn't be the school for me.

That being said I do know of schools where they were well below the national average but there were several children who scored 120. Some schools are not good at getting the best out of the quiet, non disruptive middle of the road kids.

Also a lot of high scoring schools do in insane amount of practice in year 6. In some schools it appears to be all they do. Is that what you want?

You need to find out the general ethos of the school, their approach to the Sats and if there are any obvious reasons why they did so badly

It’s worth remembering that SAT results are cohort dependent so if I were you OP I’d try and find what last year’s Y6 got to see if it’s a blip or an underlying trend.
in our school, this year’s cohort has scored in the high 70% but we know that next year’s cohort will really struggle due to a high proportion of SEND, behavioural issues, EAL and absence. The year after will be high again and then it will dip again the year after. Is it one form entry?

We are in an area of London that is a bit deprived, lots of kids with English as a second language and our school scored 75%. So this does look low. But you can see past years online too, I'm sure the scores fluctuate and there will be the odd year with more SEN etc.

Check the results for last year.

If they were also low.

I wouldn't send my kid to that school.

I would not look at just one years results. You need to see what it looks like over a few years. Our local school results have dipped this following it previous years , however there is a significant level of need in their year. It is highly likely to be back up where it was next year.

However in their year there are children who have excellent achievements in other aspects of life e.g. sport, music, the arts. If you are happy with the ethos of the school and your child is happy I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on it. I know secondary schools don’t.

Look at a few yrs as posters have said but I would want higher. Our primary gets between 35-40% at exceeding most years.

They may have a cohort with a percentage of SEN. We had a dip last year due to a high needs cohort but we're still above the national average. I would have a look at previous years data and their progress from KS1.

But if it is consistently low, I would be moving.

That will be most likely because you don't live in a deprived area. No schools would get anywhere near those results around here.

In terms of whether it’s actually a good school or not, value add or progress levels tell you a lot more. Realistically some areas have an intake which means children have much lower starting points. I’ve been in some pretty awful school educationally but who have good results because the parents pay for tutoring! Having said that, it’s a very low percentage and you are right to be asking questions.

It's definitely not the norm & it has a high % of dc with EAL (30% plus) which tends to push up scores.

I wouldn’t go anywhere near a school like that. It just isn’t worth the risk. There are plenty more options that are surely better choices.

The results seem very poor and I would be worried about my child's education.

It boggles my mind that people don't see/acknowledge that there is such a chasm between the results obtained by some state schools and other state schools - the narrative on here is that going to a state school = salt of the earth and going to a private school = you are the devil. When will people realise that the real inequality is between state schools and other state schools - and when will this absolutely shocking and disgraceful inequality be addressed? I suppose that they do realise, but they manoeuvre around the issue by making sure their own kids are at the good state schools and pretending that they are the salt of the earth and close their eyes and ears to children in crap schools.

You need to look holistically at where your child would sit within these results.

A few things to consider:

If it's only 30 per class than the percentages can be skewed very quickly by one or two children under achieving...or with good results over achieving.

When people talk about deprived areas and intake it's important to remember that white working class schools and schools of ethnically diverse areas are both considered deprived but white working class kids tend to be harder to get good exam results with.

The school might be lovely and have to do SATs because it's been forced on them but might just not be that driven by grilling the Y6s with it...it avoids being an exam factory but kids still learn.

Or it could honestly be a shit hole nightmare school...results are one good indication of success but they really don't tell the whole story.

It depends on what you want for your child. I sent eldest DS into an outstanding school with fantastic SATs results each year. However he was desperately miserable there and because of that did terribly in his SATs, secondary school did their own tests for grouping and he is in the top set for both English and maths. . He didn’t want to be moved from his primary school sadly. Younger DS is in a very average school with similar SATs results and so far he’s doing a lot better than his elder brother. Less stress etc. I would now focus on where my child was happiest than SATs results from any year in my own experience.

OP you should be able to search up the school’s 2024 results here:

https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/#SearchSchools

Oh come on! The Maths percentage is incredibly dire. Rounding up, only 10 kids out of 30 managed to get expected. 3 papers with 110 points available, and the lowest for expected was 58. No cohort skews the data that much and the papers were pretty accessible this year , compared to other years.

I'd be looking elsewhere if you can. And you may not have to look far - DD's primary had 75% meeting the expected standard across the board. The school we're actually in catchment for (though it's further away) got 44%. And DD's school has more pupils with EAL, so that's not always a predictor (though it does serve a much less deprived catchment)

I work in a small school with only 8 year 6s. 4 didn't take sats. We will probably have the lowest results in the county this time, but last year we had 12 year 6s all passed everything amdv11 were at greater depth on everything and we were second
Results really are reflective of the intake more than the teaching.

You can see a ranking based on stas results for all the schools in your area on your council website, it should be easy to find with Google.
Alternatively, locrating is really good if you don't mind paying for a month or two. It puts together all the available so it's easy to compare schools.

I was amazed to see that our catchment that everyone is raving about has 38% of kids at the expected level!

What teacher assessment grades?

That’s simply not true. It depends on other factors such as whether they are newly arrived, if their parents can speak English, if they have come from a war zone and not received formal education before … we have all of these scenarios in our school.

Of course the cohort can skew the data that much … what nonsense.

That makes it less alarming to me, as an isolated set of results. It really does depend on the cohort! We have a child in our year class with significant learning needs, and there's another that was held back a year but still gets counted in results, even though assessments aren't actually taken (year 1 phonics screening in this case, I don't actually know if it will be the same come SATS).
I'd keep an eye out again next year though.

@JimmyGrimble

What I said is true though. Schools with high EAL numbers tend to see better SAT scores. Did you miss the tend bit?

We had a very low achieving cohort this year. We are a 1 form entry school with a high % of pupil premium, eal and SEN. We did our best but got similar results to what has been quoted above. We had 2 children who missed the maths by 1 mark. A few others by 2-5 marks. We can show progress for every child as we test regularly throughout year 6 and address gaps but when you have children who are working at year 1 level they are never going to get expected standard. Next years cohort are strong and we will probably get around 80% across the board next year. The cohort the following year will likely be another low achieving class results wise as we have 6 ehcps in that 1 class. All the classes have had the same teachers as most of the them have been at the school at least 5 years, some 10 years+. The make up of the class really does matter, more so than the teaching in most cases.