To think that SATS are more important than people let on?

[Inthehottub]

On mumsnet I always find that the general consensus is that SATS aren’t important.

Once upon a time I would have agreed.

However, now I’ve experienced having a child go through secondary school and GCSEs, I would say that SATS results are very important.

Our experience was that the SATS results determine which sets the child goes into in secondary school and also the GCSE predicted grades. I know that there are other assessments too, but SATS are a large part of it.

Our experience of secondary school was also that the ‘top set’ kids get absolutely everything thrown at getting them those top grades. I was also told by teachers and pupils alike that the lower sets tend to have more disruptive children so it’s harder for the quieter less able kids to work their way up out of the bottom sets.

Obviously that’s only my experience having had two go through secondary school and one now approaching sats.

Interested to know what others think.

Yabu - SATS are not important
Yanbu - they are very important

Predicted grades are meaningless.

My school doesn't set.

My dc school doesn't set until year 8

Are you saying your kids didn’t move sets beyond their initial sets in year 7, as that’s not my experience!

Are SATS used by OFSTED as one of the measures in grading primary schools - so outstanding, good, requires improvement?

Not important at all .. most high schools retest one children start, and will move young people if needed.

SATS are a measure of the success of the Primary School, not a measure of your children’s success

Schools use their own assessments for streaming. The SATs just give them an indication of what to expect. They mean nothing after the first term of Year 7.

I don't think enough people know that they are the basis for the progress 8 figure that schools have to publish, or that they will generate a target grade for students (which admittedly can be tweaked, but only to try and get the student to make progress for the figures!)

No they definitely didn’t.

Although of course children can move up or down.

Anecdotally there were more that moved down than up though.

Just sounds like a rubbish school to be honest.
I don’t think you can generalise from that one experience.

I think they can create confirmation bias which leads to more attention/being noticed and that could then impact sets.

Poor (and many average) schools will use SATs and “potential” (aka predicted grades) to determine which children to focus on for intervention. For example, a child predicted a 5 and getting a 3 is targeted for attention while a child predicted a 2 and getting a 3 is told they’re doing well.

Im a bit cynical about some schools though - particularly ones in large academy chains.

My son’s secondary didn’t use SATs at all. For anything. Some Primary Schools should be ashamed of the way they force SATs down the throats of children. From September to May that is all they focussed on at my sons. They have made zero impact on my sons secondary experience.

This is what I’m saying, the schools obviously want the best progress 8 score that they can.

Ime they did all that they could to keep those children at that higher level.

Yabu
out secondary school doesn’t do anything with the information as far as I can tell
no setting in y 7 or 8

I’m a maths tutor and I don’t offer SATS tutoring purely because I have found (in the past, in my area) that it’s more stress than it’s worth for the kids. Idk if it’s just parents here, but they want me to really push an 11 year old, often to the point they’re distressed and I just won’t do that. SATS are important to an extent, if your kid can do well then that’s amazing, but it’s not make or break.

I have one boy now who’s got a really bad fear of exams and it comes from his SATS. He is really bright and he could smash his exams, but he clams up. That’s not worth it.

But as a pp pointed out. says results ARE used to measure the high schools progress 8 score. Which is extremely important to the school.

Unless any teachers or school management know different? I’m happy to stand corrected.

It's harder to make progress from the top scores, seems like a bit of a flawed system.

I'm thankful we're mixed ability.

DS secondary streamed according to SATs results in Year 7. By the October half term of Year 7 they adjusted sets based on their own assessments. So it affected secondary streaming for about 8 weeks.

My Dd2 was an end of August birthday . Her Sats predicted she had only a 50% chance of getting 5 x grade C GCSE.
She nailed 10 of them went on to take 4 x A levels nailed them, then did an honours degree in Primary school teaching with QTS and nailed that . So in her case they were way out .

That’s amazing, well done to your dd.

Not our experience at all. DD was at state primary and got average SATs. She is in a private school now and has been climbing through the sets every year to set 2/6 and likely to get all 7's. The school loves kids like this because they give them great Progress 8, particularly in the private sector because they can smash what the state schools could do out of the park. The grammar near us takes the top performers and are under the level of the local (poorly performing) non-selective private schools with their results. Progress 8 shows the teaching.

Sats are important but not as important as the data secondary schools collect in year 7 and year 10. Always ask for that data.

Parents think they aren’t important because ‘they retest in yr 7/8, they don’t set at my school, it won’t determine what they’ll get in 5 yrs time” etc etc etc.

However, despite all these “visible” things for parents it doesn’t change the fact that if a child goes to secondary having met the expected standard in their SATs - secondary schools then “have” to get them them to at least 5 GCSEs (including maths and English) or otherwise they risk poor performance measures and a poor Ofsted. Whereas if a child just misses the SATs pass mark then they don’t “have” to get them to this benchmark at 16.

I’m sure secondary schools try hard for all pupils but if I was head teacher then I’d definitely work hardest with those I had to get to pass (as well as hunting for those borderline fails at 11 which I could pull up by the time they were 16). Plus this would probably guide which students I put my best teacher in front of and a TA if my school could afford one.

In fact if I was being realistic I suspect all those who have to pass will be marked on tracking sheets (irrespective of which set/class they are in) and also those possible borderline improvers would also be highlighted to help teachers know who best to target.

I've had 3 go through secondary school and one in Y7 and my experience is that they do their own setting themselves in the first few weeks of Y7 and level set everybody. Prep schools dont do SATS so if they get kids in year 7 coming from private primary, or a different country, they dont even have any SATS. Ive never heard anything about predicted grades until year 9 at the earliest and even then its tentative.

I don’t think they’re important at all. My dc did mediocre on SATS. She got placed into sets with all the mediocre disruptive kids. It wasn’t a good fit. In Y8, they moved her into top sets and she’s consistently in 80-90% compared to cohort average in her sets of 50-60%. I think she just didn’t test well in SATS because there was so little focus on deeper learning and understanding because it was all about constant practice tests for all of Y6.