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?

We went out for dinner after they were done just as a sort of phew thats over.

My son got a holiday. But that was already booked for the end of SATs week, because we knew he would go through absolute hell in sitting them and would need some time off to recover properly. The school even authorised it as they could see how much he struggled during SATs week. He literally shook and cried every single day, the only reason he was able to get through them was the thought of that holiday.

I’m glad your grandchild is blossoming, but so are mine who were encouraged to do well in SATs, I don’t really see the correlation. That kind of proves the point they dont make any difference.

I’m not just trying to raise mine to pass exams. I want them to enjoy school, take pride in their effort, respect authority, I want to build their self esteem, learn how to reward themselves for effort. I’m not expecting you to agree, but for me, being positive about SATs and supporting them did those things. Im just trying to think how I’d feel if my parents told me the thing I was working hard for didn’t matter, apart from the fact I don’t believe it’s true, I just find it very dismissive.

Support comes in different forms though and children are also different. For my son who isn't going to get good results in SATs no matter how much effort he puts in, supporting him is balancing out the pressure placed on children by schools and reassuring him that it is a test for the school and that SATs really, really don't matter in the long run.

That isn't dismissive for my son and has made him feel better about it because he was dreading Year 6 up until that reassurance.

It may not be true for your secondary but it is is certainly true for my child’s and at least two other people have posted the same. Some
schools may supplement with their own tests but SATs scores are in the mix.

every parent’s evening we get ‘they are doing SO well’ as they are 2 plus grades ahead of a rock bottom predicted grade/flight path. The grade predictions includes French/german/computing/art/drama/PE and all the other non-SATS related subjects taught at secondary. Teachers are less likely to have considered stretch/intervention as they have already exceeded THEIR metric.

Some schools may also place children in sets based on the results. Ours doesn’t set at all so that isn’t so relevant, it is the flight path/expected grade that will have consequences. Secondary is not some sort of fresh start or clean sheet with ability considered anew. There can also be negative consequences for SATs high flyers as not meeting an expected grade can result in pressure to improve. I’ve heard parents say that their child only got the SATs grade as they were hot housed or developmentally ahead at that point, the path wasn’t sustainable for their child and they became stressed.

my advice would be not to dismiss the consequences of SATs but not to go crazy and drive your kid crazy either. That said, a few years into secondary, I do feel like my child failed the 11+ when I didn’t even know they were sitting it. I feel like we are constantly on the back foot. The estimated grade stays on the report card forever so we are caught in a cycle of child does better end of year than estimated teachers are amazed. Clock resets in September, last years grade is not referenced ever again, the estimated final grade is so teachers is amazed and congratulatory all over again. This would be inconsequential were it not for the fact that the stretch and feedback to go up further grades is not offered.

A friend of mine got really hurt by the flightpath thing. Her daughter is bright and assessed as such all through primary. Did inexplicably badly on her sats (possibly just so nervous) and the school said not to worry about it.

Turned out it caused problems all through secondary as she was always massively exceeding her flightpath basically by showing up. Expectations for her were really low.

Exactly. The message ‘it’s a test of the school not the child’ may be said to children to calm them down, but it’s not really true. Yes, it need not be the defining factor in your child’s life but to say it is inconsequential to the child is not correct. Sure, in an ideal world schools would be intervening to help all children achieve their potential but unfortunately that potential is defined at 11 (or 10 as it was in my child’s case) and captured in a metric. In a large school, teachers focus on that one metric to determine which children they need to asisist.

My child brings home a summer report with grades achieved of 4-7. Early autumn, report card comes home and we are back to the flight path grade, maximum 4, as it’s so early no class tests have been done. January parents evening, class tests have been done and we are back to 2 plus grades above the flight path and the teacher is reassuring us there is nothing to worry about, no need to do any more or anything differently as my child is doing so well. Rinse and repeat. I should also
add that my child finds the early autumn grade really discouraging. He swears blind it is based on nothing more than the teachers impression and the flight path grade. Second time this happened I monitored Google classrooms to see if there were any tests that the grade could have been based on. There were none. I did contact the school to see how the grades were arrived at and got palmed off basically.

A mum I know bought her son the latest iPhone for doing his SATs. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Don't be daft. They don't have any choice, and they don't have to do any revision or put any real effort it, so what exactly would you be rewarding??
Don't set that precedent.

No, we had a busy week that week with work stuff, her sats, my youngest got a golden certificate at school. So on the Friday night we went out for tea as a rare treat. Not terribly exciting but both my kids enjoyed it

Nope not normal. We didn’t even incentives GCSEs. Do your best every day. One friend did pay her child a certain amount per grade for her GCSEs. I can’t afford sh*t like that.

Nope all the kids in school did them. It's nothing special