To hate SATS?

[Comewhinewithme]

DS is very bright and doing really well at school he is g&t in science and english .

However he was crying yesterday because he is scared that he is going to do rubbish . I have told him to just relax and he will be fine but he was so stressed about it all.

School are getting on my nerves because I think they are bribing the kids . We got a letter last week asking if ds would like to attend morning school which would mean a 7.45 start but they would get a free breakfast and at the end of it a gift voucher . They are also offering an extra voucher to the 3 children who attend the most .
Then they want them to go in during the easter holidays .

He is 11 plenty of time to be worrying about exams in the future .

At the High School my dd is going to in September they test them every 6 weeks anyway.

Ds1 didn't know he was doing his Year 2 SATS, and I thought his school handled it really well, although the homework pressure did go up that year (which was all very worksheet based - can't say I liked that much).

The week they had their SATS they did their "quiz" each morning, then were practising for their end of term play in the afternoon. The kids were so hyped up and excited about putting on the play that the "quiz" really wasn't that big a deal. Obviously, they'd been made use to the format of the quiz by all those damn worksheets they'd had for homework! But by the sound of it, we got off fairly lightly.

No idea how well they handle Year 6 SATS though, as we still have all that to come. I do know that they're aware they're taking SATS at that age (as I've heard a neighbour's child talking about them) but not sure how much pressure is put on them.

SATs are a complete nightmare for all concerned (I'm a KS2/3 maths and science teacher)and hopefully the day will come when teachers' professional judgement is trusted above a snapshot provided by a week of testing.

That being said, I really hope the prevalent attitude is that of people saying they just encourage their child to do their best rather than saying the tests are only important to the school etc. One of my Year 6s yelled this latter opinion at me last year when I asked about missing homework and it took ages to get my (previously very disaffected and maths hating) group back to the opinion that SATs were an opportunity to show off how brilliant they were and how much progress they had made. This attitude can completely devalue the successes of the children who do well.

Also, spare a thought for the poor teachers who are caught in the middle between Senior Leadership telling them they must do x amount of past paper work a week, and so many hours of SATs based homework and show they have strategies such as boosters in place to help the target groups and wanting to keep their classes engaged in the subjects they teach.

Finally, I just wanted to provide a couple of things that are good about SATs (not that I'd cry if they were abolished tomorrow )

• It can be a great bonding experience for a year group, certainly at our school the number of friendship issues etc go right down in the run up and afterwards. *Results day is, for most, a brilliant experience, the children get a great piece of external validation that they're doing well. It also teaches them the valuable lesson that hard work pays off.

Gosh, sorry, that was a really long post when all I wanted to say was YANBU!

Bestlaid plans
Why shouldn't we tell our DC that SATS results are only good (or bad !) for the school.It is the truth
.I am pretty peed with DS's teacher telling them that they are used for setting children at secondary , when that is not true round here.In fact DS hates one of his teachers who has a few favourites and he isn't one,has said he could 'get back' at her by writing nothing on his test paper.
In fact we are in an 11+ area and all focus is on passing that.Parents and children don't care too much about SATs as long as they pass the 11+

What a shame your DS has developed that attitude, SATs or no SATs.

YANBU, it stinks.

And to those who wouldn't consider pulling their child out of school and having them miss SATS despite significant distress simply because they are bright and it might affect the school's results, I would ask what is more important to you: your child or the school?

I really hope they will be abolished soon.

no YANBU. they are shit - pointless and meaningless.
and they should be abolished forthwith.
I speak as a secondary English teacher.

Katiestar, as I said I loathe SATs, but they are a necessary evil. We have to administer them and the children have to take them. I said I preferred the encouragement to try your best attitude for two reasons. Firstly, being told that the tests are being taken only for the sake school will make most children resent them even more and make the week far more miserable than it needs to be for them. Secondly, I'm not suggesting your child would do the same as the child I mentioned in my previous post, but he seriously upset and demotivated a whole class of very low ability children who had started to look forward to SATs as a chance to show off the improvement they'd made instead of something to be feared and I think that's inexcusable.

Obviously, what you tell your child ius absolutely none of my business, I was just mentioning the approach that seems to work best for the children I've taught.

I meant "is" not "ius" obviously, and I meant to say "where possible" after the children have to take them bit. I'm blaming poor typing on the horrendously dull SATs organisation meeting I had to attend after school. It has clearly rotted some brain cells.

Can someone give me some advice re Sats? My daughter is due to take them this year, but has been really unwell and is just suffering from her 4th bout of Tonsillitis and has missed some school. Her first date for a Tonsillectomy is 7th May, just before Sats! Do I let her have the op then or wait? She is getting Tonsillitis every 2 weeks, as soon as she comes off Antiboitics she gets Tonsillitis again, and seems to be getting more poorly each time. What will happen if she is ill during SATS week?

SATS do not help a child at all. They have all been stopped in Wales.

What harpsichordcarier said (fellow secondary English teacher).

My children (assuming the damn things are still clinging on - SATs are to education as lumps of dung on a sheep's bum are to the sheep) will be having a lovely few days out when KS2 SATs hit.

Bah to this 'ooh let's just do our best in an imperfect system' nonsense. The govt. would find it quite hard to continue SATing in the face of widespread parental boycott.

One of my boys took ks1 sats a couple of years ago and started bed-wetting during that week. He's a bright child but he obviously felt stressed by it( I wasn't aware they were on until the school explained).
My other son struggles academically and I will not allow him to feel pressurised at this young age. He's an August-born child too.
The Government line is always that the child should not feel pressurised and that Sats are just there to work out what the child knows.
How naive is this?
All children form groups and are well aware of where they are in the academic pecking order.
Testing highlights this further.
Children need to be reading, drawing, doing drama, playing and exploring throughout their primary years.

Oh, and I forgot to add that I'll be withdrawing them both from ks1 and ks2 sats.

Good for you, mrsmoss!

One spin-off of all this pressuring and coaching of children in the primary stage is the results they get are then used to make targets for the hapless secondary school teachers. they then have to show "value-added", i.e. how they have continued to improve a child's attainment.

Having been taught to the test means that quite often the results do not reflect a child's true ability. I became so weary of receiving Year 7 children who, according to the SATs could write in sentences, paragraphs, etc. NOT.

We always received the teacher's assessment of the child (using SAT levels) - they were invariably accurate.