Year 7 (who is very good at maths) has been put in the bottom sets.

[ReevesJeeves]

My DD has always been very good at Maths. In Year 6, she achieved Greater Depth in her Maths SATS (achieving 115/120). Since joining Year 7, she has been in a mixed ability Maths Set. In the work that has been sent home from Secondary and that is set on Sparx, she is getting 80% - 90% correct, independently.

We have just had a letter home today, advising that Maths will be set after half term, and my DD will be in Set 5 of 6! The letter also explains that she has been assessed as finding Maths challenging and not to worry about sets, every child will be assisted individually. AIBU to think the school doesn’t know my DD at all, and to send an email querying how they came to this decision? I fail to see how she can now be finding maths challenging and in Set 5 of 6, having achieved 115/120 in her SATS only months ago. Maths has always been a subject she has excelled in, right down to her KS1 Times Tables test where she scored 100%. BTW this is not a selective school or grammar, it’s mainstream state, so it’s not as though the department will be awash with Maths geniuses (in the least offensive way). I also don’t want to appear as a trouble maker or someone the school will be fed up with, but I think this needs to be questioned to find out what has gone wrong so to speak.

My husband thinks I shouldn’t say anything as the school will just think I’m a neurotic mum, I disagree and I think it needs to be dealt with and questions asked pronto - something has clearly gone drastically wrong either with the teachers assessment of DD or in the way DD is presenting herself in class?!

I wish this dismissive attitude to SATs from secondary specialists would die. SATs are highly accurate for their purpose of testing how well a child has learned the content of the KS2 national curriculum and therefore yes, it is perfectly possible to train a child for those tests. They are not intended to assess numerical aptitude in the way that quantitative component of the CAT4 is.

I am a secondary English specialist who works extensively cross-phase. It is an insult to the professionalism of primary specialists to repeat the myth that most Year 6 teachers commit malpractice every May, especially when this misconception comes from an attempt to compare apples and oranges.

I agree. DCs secondary uses SATS combined with a CAT test (done in year 6 prior to starting at the school) to set from day one at secondary in almost every subject. PE is put in sets after 2 months.

They say this means the first few weeks isn’t taken up with more tests, everything is organised and teaching content starts immediately. Their results are outstanding for a comprehensive secondary. Heavily oversubscribed. The progress 8 scores are well above average (I know there are no recent ones due to Covid). If I contacted them today about a concern like OPs I’d get a call/email back today.

Sparx - at my sons school some teachers expect 100% as I think you can redo the question if you get it wrong. Ds l current teacher expects 80% minimum but I said he needs to continue with 100% as he’s on track for a 8/9 (he got 120 in SATs) and will sit further maths GCSE. He is totally capable of 100% so I don’t want him to coast. So the sparx 100% expectation must vary from school to school. I don’t know if sparx is child specific, he says they move through material at pace in class and sparx isn’t always what they did in class - maybe different schools use it in different way.

There seems to be a big gap within set one a handful of kids getting 95% plus in all tests and then a big gap to kids getting 65/75%. They all discuss their results. We also get given class average on school reports so you can see if your child is struggling with the content.

I don’t understand why schools waste time retesting when they were just tested before summer. CAT before they start plus SATs seems logical.

I don't think there is wholesale cheating in primary schools, but I think the secondsries are right to view SATS results with caution.
The amount of drilling for the SATs msths test a school does directly affects the result. You can only ask questions on what is simple content, in a limited number of ways . The more questions they have seen and tackled, the more likely they will be to do it under exam pressure. It isnt a level playing field.
I can see why thry might attach more weight to SATS and their own assessments.
Hopefully as today is a training day, staff will have an opportunity to get back to OP.

If by ‘treat them with caution’ you mean ‘understand what they are and what they are not’ then I agree completely.

You can show children as many questions as you like but if they don't have the ability, they won't be able to answer them. I think I could pretty much rank the children we teach by about the beginning of Y3 as to how their SATs results will unfold at the end of KS2. Very rarely do children get results much outside their general classroom performance.

It might be a mistake, it might be that she is extremely good at regurgitating the things they are drilled at for tests, but doesn’t have a strong grasp of basic principles she needs to take her through to GCSE level. My DD has an excellent memory for everything she has repeatedly been taught at school, but a poor working memory.

This is classroom performance at primary though, when the work isn’t particularly hard. Secondary school is entirely different.

Agree with this, I don’t think it’s malpractice it’s just that secondary is cognitively different to primary. Primary is also hugely important.

Had similar with DD with a physics test. We have a 4-10 grading system and she got a 5 when normally she gets 9s and 10s with the occasional 8. Was shocked and told her to ask for the paper, which she did and it turned out that although her teacher had only added up the points from the first page and put those as the final score! I was impressed though with how diplomatically DD wrote to the teacher, explaining the error and asking for her paper to be regraded (back to the 9 it was). No more issues but DD was glad when she got a new physics teacher the next year.

Have you rang the school yet?
I know it's Friday before half term but I am sure the teacher will have time to respond to your query.
Maybe try several times

My Dd scored 114 in her maths sats, and was put in bottom set at secondary- she was at a grammar though so slightly different, but even so - I called the school and they said yep, she’s in the right place. I had no idea getting 114 meant bottom set, even in a grammar! She ‘only’ got a 6 in the end - I suspect had they not dumped her into the bottom end of the group she would have felt more motivated and got a 7. Definitely call them, unless you have a super maths cohort like she did, sounds like an error.

I'm surprised you're surprised here tbh!! Grammar will be full of 116+

I just think this is nonsense. The KS2 curriculum is hard for very many pupils, otherwise all children (particularly in areas with high parental engagement) would be scoring 115+. They're not. Lots of children work very hard and score 100-109. You can't memorise your way to success, you have to understand it, particularly for reasoning questions. I believe maths has the strongest correlation between SATS results and GCSE results of any subject as well.

It just goes to show you. I was extremely proud of my DS as he put his hand up in class and said Sir I think you have added my paper up incorrectly. Apparently the whole class went silent while the teacher checked his paper and then apologised. My DS said immediately after the whole class started adding up their own papers 😆 We've also had chemistry results where the teacher put down the points achieved instead of the percentage so it looked like he had done terribly 😔 I emailed the school office and requested for it to be amended.

Did anyone get over 100

We’ve had a problem with teacher totalling marks incorrectly. Correct score was 100%. It was a maths paper - the irony!!
Teacher fixed it - human error.

I once got 101% in an exam for exactly that reason. I didn't complain.

Bottom set in a grammar is entirely different - they have already filtered off the top 10 or so per cent, so the pool is of very able children. Comps have the full range, and bottom sets more often than not only take the Lower paper with a max grade of 5.

One of my children once got something like 32 out of 30 points on a test, which was very confusing but apparently there was a reason, putting in extra information or something, I can't remember now.

Regarding your husbands concerns, it completely depends what you said in your email/how you approached it as to whether you will come across neurotic or troublesome

@Bloau thatmaybe your experience but somekids will do a lot better on sats. For one reason the way that our school teach favoours the faster kids. And SATs and tests in general favoue the oldest in the year. What teachers shoukd be doing is identifying the kds ready to make a big leap.
I knew dc was a lot better than the school thought as i sat with her abd saw she was just slow to work things out. She is probably heading for a 7 at gcse so no genious but a lot better than the 4-5 the primary would have thought. Sen kids are also often underperforming as achieving the average or minimum with little
effort.
Some kids genuinely are better at the harder work

Our school got around 25/58 kids to greater depth in maths previously. They do put a lot of effort in (in y6 ) with cgp books and practice tests. And extra lessons before/after school so its not all natural aptitude. I dont think on an individual level a 110 vs 118 etc is necessarily that different. It does show accuracy though which os necessary to do well.

Dc2 used to love maths and did very well at ks1 its sad the way it is taught has put her off it a lot

My son scored slightly higher than 114 in his Maths SATS and didn't even get past the first round in the grammar school entrance exam!