AIBU to think the SATs / 11+ pressure is nuts?

[MizzyDazzy]

My daughter is in year 4 and I think her school is quite high pressure. They have always done constant test papers and have now started converting the scores to standardised SATs marks and telling the kids where they are and if they are working towards, expected or greater depth.

This is clearly quite openly talked about in the classroom and my daughter is very aware of where she and everyone else is.

This has caused her to come home in tears the last few weeks over her scores. She’s dyslexic and hasn’t always found academics easy.

She got a solid expected in maths and just missed out in spag (got it for grammar but was dragged down by her spelling, which is her major issue with the dyslexia). They annoyingly didn’t tell the kids their English comp scores but hers was greater
depth.

I think she’s doing really well, particularly when I know it hasn’t been easy for her, but she is in floods of tears as she has some of the lowest scores in the class. I do believe she is one of the bottom as most of the children will go on to get greater depth in their SATs and most are already being tutored quite heavily for 11+. She is also in a number of intervention groups.

AIBU to think she’s done well and her school is just bonkers? Or are most kids across the country doing much better than this? For context her scores are, 107 maths, 98 spag (105 on grammar) and 132 English comp.

The parents WhatsApp’s is going crazy over the scores and breakout groups for 11+ “support” depending on what schools you will be targeting and this definitely spills into the classroom. She sat next to a girl who was saying she must have one of the worst scores as she had dropped 4 marks on a paper!

We don’t actually live in an 11+ area but boarder 2 with 2 of the top grammars in our doorstep that don’t have catchments. So people need almost full marks to get in to these schools and I think they’ve lost all sense of perspective.

I just find this all absolutely ridiculous and hate that I feel trapped in it. My daughter isn’t going to take the 11+ and SATs really are not that important. I’m debating taking my daughter out of the school because the pressure is just so stupid and clearly going to get worse. But she is very happy with her friends there and generally at school so moving her feels risky in a way. Plus I assume all schools in this area will be the same…

So if we leave her in the school how can I support her and help her feel confident / proud of what she has achieved? And stop this constant comparison?

We had to pick schools during covid so we couldn't visit them unfortunately so there was really not much to go on! All our neighbours kids went to this school, it is our closest school, and they aren't the high pressure type. So although I was aware it had a reputation for good results I probably didn't anticipate the pressure. But our neighbours kids are older and I think the demographics of the area and therefore school have changed a lot in the last 10 years. Many parents are now moving to the area specifically for the school so yes it is all now feeding itself. The parents in my son's year 1 class are far more crazy than my daughter's!!

It’s not your daughter letting her teacher and school down. They are failing her and letting her down.

It doesn’t have to be. Make a a big nothing burger out of it. 11+ is one thing (that’s pressure you apply yourself), but SATS literally means nothing. Yes, they sort of use it for placing them in sets in secondary, but even then they move around. My eldest went into sort of middle sets because she’s not great at exams and we did give a shit about SATS so did nothing extra. She got moved to top sets once in secondary and is very happy. You need to steer this. It will become a big deal if you let it.

So I think the issue is that we are not technically in a grammar area, but we border two so if you get next to full marks on one set you can get in, and the other allows a max of 10 pupils from our Borough into their schools.

My two closest schools are grammar, but it's not a grammar area, so these schools have no catchment. Children come from 100s of miles (even abroad) to sit their tests (they are the school's own tests) and then just move to the area when their kid gets in. Based on the swarms getting off the trains in the morning, very few local kids go to these schools.

But the non grammars in our area are just 'ok' so there is huge pressure to basically score 100% on 11+ papers and get into a grammar.

I just wish she would see that it doens't matter. But I do understand why it is so hard for her not to compare and then feel down when her friends are all getting good marks and saying it's easy.

Some of these kids will still only be 8 years old. It's too much at this age.

My daughter being one of the 8yr olds!

If we separate this into ‘normal’ and ‘not normal’:

• it is normal to do tests in Maths, Reading Comprehension & SPaG each term.
• it is normal for the scores in these to be converted into WTS / EXS / GDS for eg data entry into whatever system the school uses to monitor pupil progress.
• it is somewhat normal to review some areas of weakness revealed by the papers eg ‘lots of people found this question tricky, let’s look again at this topic / question type and do a couple of examples’
• it is normal to target interventions based on test results, for those children who over time are not making progress - so a child with no SEN but who is gradually slipping from EXS to WTS over time would be a focus, for example, not ‘because they failed the test’ but ‘because the test is revealing gaps / difficulties that can potentially be resolved through timely intervention’
• it is NOT normal to hand back tests with obvious audible commentary converted into SATs level, nor to dwell on test results in class time. They’re snapshots for the teacher, may be discussed in parents’ evenings and inform next steps for the class and the children, but not in a 1959s ‘class order’ way.
• it is NOT normal to track mock SATs marks publicly in Y6

However, it does sound as if you are in an area where secondary school allocation is a very high stakes game, and one on which parents will be highly focused and anxious. That will, inevitably, affect how the children, and then the school, behave. It may be that this is a way that the school has evolved in order to avoid 32x individual requests from parents for test results and what they mean at the end of every term, and 32x requests for results from the Y6 teacher fir most recent marks every time Y6 so much as looks at a SATs paper….

We are in a private prep and the 11+ pressure is crazy. But I have friends in our local primary and I know the pressure is full on now for year 6 but not before for SATS but 11+ prep does start in Year 4.

Our local state school is dropping their classes from 3 to 2 due to falling birth rates - therefore I think panic has set in for numbers for schools (I know our private school is panicking) birth rates have fallen - schools want to show good results so people choose them. This isn’t about the kids.

132 is an interesting score as SATs scaling only goes up to 120.
Difficult to tell where she’s at without understanding the scaling.

She got 36/40 and I was going on a table a mum shared on the whatsapp group to convert it as it was the one result the school didn't give the SATs equivalent for. So I guess that table must have been wrong! Which is quite funny as the parent is a primary school teacher 😂

Ah interesting to know the 11+ pressure is crazy at private as that is where I would probably move her to...

I think this is a very good point.

Proprietary tests sold by different providers for routine end of term use have different marks, different scaled scores and different mapping onto WTS/EXS/GTS. These may or may not use the 120 scaled scores cut off used in the actual SATs.

If the sharer is a primary teacher, she may know the exact test publisher and therefore the published mapping for that test.

Agreed. But it means we can’t help with any understanding of her child’s marks, as we don’t know the scaling.
The 132 mark, at 36/40, would be a 108 under the true SAT scaling.

Not all privates.

it depends on what sort of school it is and what sort of schooling the children are looking to move into.

you do get private primaries where most of the parents are looking towards grammar/selective state secondary and these tend to focus strongly on the 11+,

other private schools may have a population which is looking more towards traditional private secondaries and is either an all through school (so not so much pressure) or is a traditional prep school which goes up to 13 and prepares for the 13+.

my kids went to a traditional prep school (age 7-13) and while a couple of kids did leave at the end of year 6 for local grammar and state options the vast majority stayed for year 7 and 8 and then went onto senior schools, a mix of boarding and non boarding.

Putting grades on the wall is almost certainly a breach of GDPR which you could raise with the school.

This all sounds very bizarre. We live in a grammar county and state schools are not allowed to prep children for the 11+, beyond providing them with experience of doing 1 practice test in test conditions a minimum of 2 days before the actual test. And even being in Bucks, talk of the 11+ didn't start until mid year 5

Which is unfair, when many private schools are hothousing them for the 11+, which goes against the whole concept - grammar schools were created for high achievers who can't afford a private education. Some ones local to us boast of 100% pass rate, when they aren't even selective at entry. So the highest ability children aren't necessarily the ones getting in, but those whose parents can afford private or tutoring but want a state secondary to help with UCAS applications.

I think the concept of the 11+ and the pressure it places is wrong. My oldest is year 5 and academically able, quite likely to pass, but I can see the pressure it's putting on her, and would prefer she didn't do it if my choice, but she has her heart set on 1 specific girls grammar which has fantastic sports and drama facilities, so we are supporting her to try to get in.

Thos sounds like the Pixl tests? Which generally score out of 40.

Anything between 65 and 80% (I think) is working at expected standard. Anything over 80% is greater depth.

SATs are ridiculous and should be scrapped. Because it's a test of the school, the teachers project the pressure onto the pupils and it's wrong. Your school sounds OTT even with that considered.

I think working towards / expected/ greater depth is the work of the devil and should be binned forever. It offers no motivation to able students and does not accurately reflect small improvements made by others.

Every other country in the world uses marks or grades for a reason.

It must be a private school because state schools are notcallowed to voach 11+ and onlyballowed to do one practice paper a year.

The problem is your school. Ours are at leafy village school. North West.

Ours have always done standardised tests, nothing to do with SATS. Just constant monitoring but yes, identifying whether they are exceeding / achieving etc. The results go on their reports (used to justify the banding I think) but not discussed with the kids.

My daughter is the girl in her class who gets 140 and the joy of others in seeing her drop a mark etc. is awful. It's bullying. I hope you told the friend whose daughter is in Year 6 that this kind of behaviour is absolutely disgusting and she should be ashamed of her.

Should add the standardised tests ours do are NFER. They go up to 140. Have a look at NFER. 130+ is top 5%.

At our leafy state, 140 is not unheard of. Both mine score 140 for Maths, 135+ for English. I asked if this was rare and they said in a middle class area with invested parents, 120 is reasonably common (which I think is top 20%). National average is 100.

This sounds like a school culture problem. I'm guessing parents choose this school because it does so much hot housing and most of the parents are targeting grammar schools and there is a school culture of pushing for high achievement and the school has a reputation for it. It does happen, I worked in a school like this as a supply teacher for a term - the parental pressure is immense. Add this to a weak SLT who cripple under parent pressure or a SLT who are very much about attracting good students because it looks good for league tables and it can be a toxic place to be. Or in 1 case a headteacher who has seen some video about motivation and accountability and I can only imagine got the wrong end of the stick and did a whole inset day morning pushing us to share results and test outcomes in class with children to build accountability and to motivate them. It can be very much parent driven, you only need a vocal few to really start talking about tutoring and test papers in a WhatsApp group and suddenly other parents are getting on board because grammar places are hard to get and next thing you know 80% of the class are having tutoring. Then the talk trickles into the playground - "me and x go to Kumon", "you and X have miss x who comes to your house".

If you think the school culture will be too much for your DC then I would take them out and send them to another school - both children. Most schools are quite chilled about sats.