Rewards for completing SATs

[SATsSitsrewards]

Did your child get a reward for doing their SATs? Not for how well they did, but for doing them? The results will be out later this month at our school but I don’t know if other schools get them at the same time.
Dc came home yesterday and told me two people had been taken to Center Parcs as a reward, and one had been bought a laptop. Another child was told they’d get £100 if they did well on the tests even though they’d already passed the entrance exam to one of the local private schools.

Dc has just been diagnosed with autism and ADHD and we went out to our local pizza place at the end of the week in acknowledgment of it being a tough week and time recently.

Are holidays, laptops and cash the usual reward for sitting the tests or do people usually wait until they get the results? Or are rewards not really a thing?

SATs are irrelevant so no, I wouldn’t.

They are testing the school, not your child!

At GCSE level and above, I would probably use some kind of incentive to encourage performance.

Not for SATS.
Will probably do for GCSE.

We went on holiday during the half term. We'd have gone anyway but dd feels like it was her sats reward !!

Not sure there's any such thing as "normal". Your gesture seems lovely as it acknowledges it without overdoing it. I tried to tell mine that SATs were just tests to check the school were teaching what they were meant to and not really to do with them.

My daughter is now doing GCSEs and I have no plans to do anything to mark the end or herv results.

No. Not a thing here.

I guess it's how you frame it. I can imagine thinking 'oh a holiday to Center Parcs would be nice, we could go in half term after DC finishes SATs'. We might then use it motivation. We once went to Center Parcs for DS's birthday. In reality his birthday fell in half term with a conveniently timed inset day, so it was a family holiday.

SATs are a test of the school not the child. Yes for gcses no for sats

School arrange a post sats trip to the theme park and another day out. We gave ours a book he wanted. For 11+ he got dinner out and my old phone (which was coming soon anyway), but that was linked to working hard, not necessarily passing. The message on sats from us is that they’re testing the school not you, it’s been good to you do your best for them. He had us pushing him through Y5, e we told him to enjoy Y6 before secondary ratcheted up a level. He worked hard at school and will do well, but none of us really care about the results and there’s been no pressure from us.

No way. Think I put a note wishing them luck in the lunchbox on the first day and a cupcake or something…

Will be rewarding GCSEs with a laptop which is useful for college obvs.

No, I didn't do anything big but now you mention it my son did mention someone in his class got a new gaming computer after SATs.

I don't know whether these people with big expensive events already have these in mind and then just say it's a reward for SATs or whether they are genuinely go out and spend a fortune on a big item for that.

We reward hard work, never results as they don’t necessarily correlate! Dinner out for my Y6’s SATs this year (he did work hard and it doesn’t really matter who they are testing, it’s always good to encourage best effort regardless) and for my daughter a post GCSE holiday (bigger than usual). She has worked really hard but I doubt it will result in really top grades.

I’m glad it’s not just me that went low key. One child was revising for SATs all through the Easter holidays which I thought was ridiculous. The high school she’s going to doesn’t even pay any attention to the results. She’s being groomed to follow in her parents’ footsteps with a medical career. So much pressure on a child. I told dc that it was to see how well the teachers had been teaching and that the results didn’t matter. There was some bullying over practice SATs results so for dc the actual SATs were a big worry.

I dont think saying "it's a test of the school not you" is fair to the kids who've gone through them. For my DD SATS has swallowed the whole of year 6 and been a constant pressure. She had rewards of a restaurant once they were all done that week and I've got her an experience day for when she gets her results. I'm not rolling in money but the pressure they get put under for exams is huge these days so they need something to make it seem worthwhile (I work in a school so see meltdowns due to exam stress regularly).

SATs results all come out on the same day - this year it’s Tuesday 7th July.

We didn’t reward them, but we (and our school) made them a very low key event, so the kids didn’t even really pay much attention to them. If there had been a big build up with lots of pressure, like you we’d have probably gone out for a pizza to celebrate the end, but that wasn’t the case for us.

Not really. DD did hers last year and the school gave them loads of rewards afterwards. Not specifically because of SATS but they could use their reward points (gained throughout the year) to buy treat afternoons, like pizza making, crafts, a football match... At least twice a week until the end of term they were doing a treat activity, in amongst rehearsing for the end of year play.

So we decided she had plenty of rewards to be getting on with there!

We also reward hard work- and DS1 has SEN so life in general is harder for him.

Our school did not do SATS (indy) and he is doing GCSEs now. I always gave him a pound for every house point he got - and when his GCSEs are over we are planning to get him something related to his special interest- but the deluxe version that he is mooning over not a second hand version which he planned to get himself with Christmas money.

I always think that I have to be rewarded to go to work via my salary so it's fair eough he is rewarded for his hard work and dealing with all the stress we put on these kids at a young age. He deserves a reward. It's hard enough for him to last through each school day.

We’ll definitely mark the end of GCSE’s. A lot of hard work goes into them.

One thing at the back of my mind is that I think secondary school GCSE targets often partially based on SATS. And the progress 8 metric certainly is. So while sets are basically there to measure primary schools the better they do in some schools the higher they expectation will be for their GCSEs which I think is good..

This thread has made me think we should. I kind of thought that Prom and all the stuff that goes with it was marking it but maybe we'll go out for a meal too.

This happened to my eldest. It is called a Flight Path and so based on his on SATs results his GCSE predictions were that he would get a 4/5 in English and a 5/6 in maths. School sets were based on SATs plus CATs that they did when they started secondary.

The issue for my child was they hit their stride at secondary and so their top working grade for maths was always a 7 despite actually getting 9s. Their maths teacher was SLT and even they could not override the system. It assumed you couldn't get more than a 2 grade increase. They got a 9 in maths and an 8 in English.

The moral of this story is my very average achieving primary child absolutely aced out their GCSEs, got 4 A stars at A level and went to an incredible university. As was pointed out to my child don't let some test at 11 define what you are capable of.

We never rewarded grades but the effort.

Glad to read of those making it low key.

We bought our daughter a smalll squishy after she did hers to reward her for taking them in her stride and working hard but not getting stressed or worried about it. We had explained to her that is more about testing the school and we wanted her to do her best but not to worry. We were more concerned with her state of mind then the results. My husband and I both work in schools and see some of the children getting so upset and pressured.

We always celebrated the end of any exam period in a low key way, based on DC’s choice - be it a family meal or a favourite takeaway.

(Never rewarded specifically for achievement of results, going to the next academic stage was reward enough.)

I agree not rewardingfor results, but for the fact os doing them.

I also am a big fan of celebrating everything. Life is hard very often. Why not celebrate and express appreciation for milestones!

A laptop... for SATs?! Absolutely crackers.