Children who fail English or Maths in Y6 will be forced to resit their SATs

[noblegiraffe]

....under a Tory government, from 2016.

The reason they will be forced to resit their SATs in Y7 is to avoid dragging down the bright kids who are forced to share a classroom with them.

Secondary schools who don't manage to get 80% of these failures to pass by the end of Y7 will face government intervention.

WTAF.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/11521061/Children-who-fail-English-and-maths-exams-must-take-re-sits-Tories-say.html

Nicky Morgan also put on her concerned face when talking to teachers about workload, yet here she is introducing something that will hugely increase teachers' workload (all the admin this will generate, not to mention administering and marking the tests, and that's before any extra 'revision' sessions that the school will want them to put on, on top of what is already done for these kids.

Why not just leave teachers to teach. Weird idea, I know, but we do the job because we love to educate children. And we do it every day so most of us are pretty good at it. Don't mind being checked up on occasionally, but by people who have done the job themselves. Not some career politician who has never been in a classroom as an adult. Or ever done a days paid work outside of politics.
Come into my class and I'll introduce up to year 11s who can just about write their name. Why ?? Because they have had head injuries, drug addicted mums in pregnancy, severe learning problems etc. In Mainstream schools.
End of rant. I hate politicians.

How exactly does he envisage that secondary maths and English teachers are going to be able to fit this extra work into their timetable?

I thought that there was a national shortage of secondary maths teachers. I can't see how ridiculous schemes like this are going to attract maths graduates into teaching.

So what happened to the idea that sats test the school not the child ? A when they finally "pass" - who gets the credit - the secondary or the primary they came from.

And that is without the whole - what is a fail question. I always thought you got levels - not pass or fail.

Totally pointless exercise - secondaries do their own testing and levelling anyway. I am all for picking out those kids (for whatever reason) who would benefit from more personalised teaching (who wouldn't to be honest ?) - but SATS do nothing to help the individual child.

tautology on BBC when they talk about SATs tests oh yes, me too, campervan!

I can think of at least ten children that I currently teach at secondary school, who achieved poorly at SATS because they have very genuine difficulties in accessing the level of work. All, without exception, are sweet, willing children - not misbehaving or naughty or lazy - just nice children who struggle with some diagnosed and undiagnosed learning difficulties. And constantly resitting their SATS (because it WOULD be constant resits for them) would utterly destroy their self confidence; not that they have much anyway as our school system has already made them feel 'thick' by age 11! As if the kids weren't under enough pressure from the levels/sublevels obsession - this is my sixth year of teaching, and I swear the number of childrens struggling with stress / anxiety / mental health issues has jumped up in the last two years at our school. It's bloody depressing, and this wouldn't help that situation!

A more sensible solution to address this would be to provide more funding for students identified as underperforming in the SATS, and to ensure they have support to small group interventions at secondary school. But oh no, that would cost money, so let's just get them to resit a test, and add to teacher's workload to get the students to jump through this hoop.

I can also imagine that as soon if their KS2 SATS level did improve, this would of course change their GCSE target, as if some of them weren't so bloody ridiculous anyway!

Rant over, but if I had been even remotely tempted to vote Conservative (and I wasn't) that ship would have just sailed this morning...

Secondary schools already have their own tests and measures and interventions. This is just the government wanting to add to its bl**dy league tables. I am 100% certain it will not improve teaching and learning in any way. It might also make some schools even more obsessed with teaching to the test than they already are, which will definitely drag down any kid who was hoping to be inspired by what they were taught in school...

Please excuse the various typos - clearly I shouldn't get this pissed off before I've had my morning coffee!

Let's not forget that this is the government that scrapped modular exams because of the endless resits that were detracting from teaching time.

From looking at twitter this morning I can't see any teachers tweeting in support of this, but plenty who think it's a terrible idea.

I don't think teachers are the target audience for this policy.

No, but Gove was shelved because he pissed off teachers so much he was an election liability. Morgan's job was to be NotGove and sweet-talk teachers with Workload Challenges. This is a complete balls-up in that respect.

I can't imagine any teacher thinking this is helpful for the students or a good use of scarce resources in Education.

It looks like all parties feel they must have a distinct policy that will "change" each are it touches (education, health, welfare, etc). It's just that sort of insistence on change that is hampering the ability of doctors, teachers, police officers and soldiers from actually doing their jobs well.

I will vote for a party that recognises that experts know how to acheive results better than they do. Guess I won't be voting again.

It would be nice if politicians would learn that people perform better and achieve more when their leaders inspire and encourage them rather than bully and distrust them...

I think it is a good idea. Underperforming children should be given all this extra tuition. They will benefit from passing their SATS. They will then be able to access the rest of the curriculum and have a better standard of education. Far too many children fall through the net as I know from year 7 at my local comp. And despite the fact that it is unpopular on here....they do often misbehave and hold other children back and I wouldn't want that for my dcs.
Why should able hard working children be held back....I can't see anything wrong with this policy.

Read this. disidealist.wordpress.com/2015/04/08/mediocre-failures/
And then tell me its still a good idea

I think it is a good idea. Underperforming children should be given all this extra tuition. They will benefit from passing their SATS.

Underperforming children do get given extra tuition. In my school they get taken out of languages for extra English and maths. They get taken out of tutor time too. They are in a class of fewer than 10. Yet despite all this intervention, they would still not (certainly not 80% of them) 'pass' their SATs at this point in Y7. The government does not understand what it is asking.

I read that post too, I love that blog. I had no idea he was a parent of adopted children, but in combination with his experience as a teacher, I think that post wipes the floor with anything a politician could possibly say.

Also I never understand why the media reports a level 3 as 'illiterate'. My y2 daughter is, at best, a level 3 and she is in no way illiterate. She can read novels, newspapers, signs, ingredients on the side of a food packet - in short anything that she might need to read. Obviously I hope she improves in fluency and comprehension, but in the unlikely event that she remains at that level she is functionally literate.

It's like that crap recently put out about all children needing to know their times tables and be able to read a novel by the end of primary school. For the vast majority of children, this goes without saying. For a minority, this is an impossibly high bar. It panders to ignorance and hurrumphing.

I've sent it my MP. This blog says everything I know and see every day. Kids are all different and some will never get a level 3. Ever. In a million years. No matter how much money you throw at it. Or how many times you call them failures. But they can still be fantastic, wonderful human beings, who can have great lives.

Thankgod they are talking about level 3 in year 6 not in year 3.
I teach a beautiful class of year 10 rogues that are fabulous. They arrived at high school with a selection of Level 2s and 3s. There are 12 of them - statemented, ADHD, looked after children, social issues, learning difficulties - a real mix of needs. Every one of those children knows what they want from the future and most already work in that field. There are four mechanics who tinker with engines and study motor at college, two girls who want to be hairdressers and again work in salons, a girl Who wants to be a nail technician and works with her aunty, a girl Who lives ponies and works in a stables (already has full time job offer with part time college course). A couple of trainee chefs, doing food tech and working in pubs. The rest are builders/plasters etc.
None of these lovely kids with their mix of issues is a failure. They are hardwork but lovely, kind, hardworking (sometimes) and focussed.
Being told they had failed in year 7 as opposed to being given the opportunity to find their own paths and follow their dreams is disgusting

I know pieceofpurplesky - I just mean that a level 3 (in whatever year) is not functionally illiterate as far as I can judge going on my own children who have reached that level.

well DD would have resat and resat it wouldn't have done any good.
Nonetheless she is 'bright and quirky'. lol.

and thank you purplesky for that post, my dd is the one who already has the job offer with part time equine college. It really pisses me off that these children are just dismissed by so many,

I think this is a nightmare. My DS was one of those failing boys 6 years ago . He got level 5 maths, level 4 Science and level 3 English. He is dyslexic and I can guarantee if he had sat the exam again in year 7 he would have failed again. Last year he walked out of school with a B in English Language and an A in English Lit GCSE . He did this by having extra group and individual lesson support in class but also due to increasing maturity and growing self esteem. he wasn't sigmitised by failure but he was supported to achieve his full potential in his own time frame .I think if he had been led to believe he was a failure in year 6 (and then probably in year 7) we would be looking at a different story now and I think he would probably have given up .

In addition to all of this I think they are raising the 'pass rate' to the equivalent of level 5 when the new SATS based on the new national curriculum starts next year.

My dd has sen language difficulties, she cannot pass an exam without support and intervention, she's been to a language unit so she is on track to getting an 'average' score. But she has had the support - about 5% of kids have speech and language impairments which will stop them getting 'normal' literacy levels, not including all those with dyslexia and other sen difficulties. They need more support and it is being slashed and cut more and more, the SLT service is down to the bone and yet now we are told these kids who probably work twice as hard in every conversation and class they have are 'failures' and will have to 'resit'.

I am SO angry about this. Get the lower achieving and SEN kids to have the support they need and stop fkin measuring everyone every 5 seconds, get them to access the learning first!

And I have a very bright high achieving eldest dd who is awful at exams and has the flu every time. She had flu through SATS and got a level lower than predicted - there is no retake for the actual SATS because it is not a GCSE it is for schools to predict their levels. Nicky Morgan is like John Snow, she knows nothing.

Everyone, just vote for someone else PLEASE.