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

lol.

this is like a bunch of people who went to buy a car discussing whether the car salesman had targets of whether he totally sold them the right car for them.

look, every job has targets and KPIs.

car salesmen have targets. They know how many cars they have to sell. They know what extras they can try and upsell. They’re good at identifying who’s got money to spend and who hasn’t.

of course teachers have KPIs. (Key performance indicators for those who are lucky enough to have escaped the jargon).

primary schools are measured on progress from reception to sats so absolutely teachers have targets based on measures of children’s achievement.

Secondary schools are measured on progress from sats to GCSE’s by ofsted so KPIs for teachers are absolutely based on that.

so despite you all saying the car salesman sold you the right car for you… he still has targets and they’re all about money.

I agree with everything you've said OP. It's what I experienced with mine.

No

And you don't know that FFT takes CAT4 data now?

I agree, they are used A LOT by secondary schools to set pathways, target grades and sets. I ended up going into secondary and arguing my DS2 needed higher targets as he was meeting them on yr8! They did but v reluctantly.

Yeah my 2nd child didn't do sats either. She did do 11 plus. Schoo ( secondary) l didn't seem to care about the lack of SATS

Yeah, I think I said that a few posts back, for the couple of cohorts that missed SATs. But for every other year group it’s based on SATs. SATs remain completely significant to a child’s target grade and therefore experience at secondary.

But while I’m here and you’re quoting it, I will say that I do wish I hadn't been so snipey in that post. It was late, I was tired, but it’s not an excuse to be rude to a fellow teacher. Apologies to that poster.

I felt they were important OP. At DS's state school they use a range of things including SATs to decide on sets.

It's much harder to move up sets than it is to stay in a high set. Behaviour tends to be better in higher sets, teaching is sometimes better and your results tend to follow you all the way to GCSE's - so for me they were important.

SATs are meaningless as far as the child is concerned in our local area. The secondary does CAT in year 7 which determines targets that never change regardless of school performance (in the case of my eldest CAT scores set targets at 6 for almost every subject and they achieved 9,8 and 7s - school clapped themselves in the back as it 'showed progress' but my child came to them a top student from primary and actually did worse in GCSEs than expected based on school performance).
It clearly depends on the area/school - for plenty of kids SATs are meaningless.

My youngest was in year 6 in 2020 so missed SATS due to Covid. The primary school passed info to the secondary school based on performance so far and the secondary school did their own regular testing. Some children were moved up or down based on results. The schools results for that cohort were the same/similar to other years so I don’t think not having done SATs made much difference.That said, they’re useful, but they’re only part of the picture.

They’re used to show the progress the school has managed to get each child to make in primary school … and are used by ofsted.

the majority of secondary schools retest in year 7 as coaching for SATS inflates grades from where a child actually is with their learning. This causes issues with GCSE predicted grades as they are set too high, the child can’t keep up and is told they are constantly behind where they should be causing massive amounts of stress.

secondary schools should be reevaluating where children are within settings and changing where appropriate.

You are absolutely right, certainly in our experience. DD in year nine currently and SATs have followed her all the way through high school. So many people saying that they are just for the school but not our experience at all.

Every school has to use it for progress 8. They might use it for nothing else but ultimately it's what they are held to account for, by government, in calculating progress 8 figures.

So what happens if the kids haven't done SATS?

They might be using CAT scores for their own internal targets but the government progress figures use SATS scores in determining a child progress so whether they like it or not they are taken into account by every secondary school.

They don't release progress figures which is what happened last summer as the cohort who just took Gcse were the cohort who did not sit sats in yr6 due to covid.

They aren't in the Progress 8 calculations

Which is also why Progress 8 won't be available for a couple of years, as there isn't the data to calculate it.

I don't even know what these are tbh. But how would it be detrimental to them not to be in the calculation

My DD2 was having operation during sats so didn't do. My friends DD wasn't living in the UK until the start of year 7 so she didn't do them either

If anyone doubts this. Look at your schools current progress 8 score on the government site for comparing schools data.
This years scores are not available. Because SATS were not taken the year the recent Gcse cohort left primary school. They won't be calculated again this year because again this year's year 11's did not take sats.

The reason this matters is that schools are held accountable for their progress 8 score. So it's in their interest to ensure that a child who smashed the sats in year 6 with really high scores, also smashes their GCSE's, as otherwise that child's results will contribute negatively to their progress 8 score.

No, SATs give a small part of the picture, but any good school doesn't use them to put children into sets. Most schools do more assessment at the beginning of Y7 and then children will be moved between sets throughout their time at secondary school.
OP your child's school sounds sub-par and not using up-to-date practice to set children nor to ensure everyone gets the right support. Luckily most schools do better.

So doesn't actually matter to the child?

That’s not my experience of 3 kids at secondary.

Our school initially put kids in sets based on SATs but retested them because they are aware that some schools teach SATS better than others. Notice that I said SATS rather than numeracy and literacy- some schools teach to the test better and it doesn’t reflect true understanding.

Having a predicted grade that is “too high” is a problem for the school and child. The child will be made to feel lazy for not achieving their predicted grade and that pressure lasts 2 years. It’s actually better to have a lower predicted grade as it’s easier to beat that grade and the school
looks good for value added. Plus there’s the obvious issue of being in a class that’s too hard. Very demotivating to be bottom of a class rather than top of the set below and in my experience being one set lower doesn’t mean not achieving grades like the set above. In our school set 2 maths students still get 7+

Most resources went to the borderline kids IME (my kids went to a comp) . The school wants the 3/4 to be 4/5 and the 6s to be 7s. If it’s a grammar then they want 9s but will still try and push 6 to 7 for the stats.

Those that work in schools have been able to explain it much better than me. But progress 8 is how well a child does at the end of GCSEs compared with how they did on their sats. It’s one of the most important measures of how well a secondary school is doing and a child who passed or did well in their sats ‘should’ pass or to get higher grades at GCSE.

In my experience schools do channel their resources into those children that they need to pass and a lot into those predicted higher grades.

I’m a teacher and would say very important. All the schools I’ve worked in, children are setted using the SATs grades. Yes they test them in y7 but there’s not that much movement between sets unless a child comes bottom or top of the set they’re in. Also used for predicted academic flight paths /GCSE grades which schools really want to meet. I personally put quite a lot of time in with my daughter in y6 to ensure she reached 110+ and got into top sets. I wanted to start in the best place possible.