SATS are not only for the performance of the school but the child.

[Tortington]

as some of you may be aware i am on a mild warpath with school - an issue i didn't refer to you previously came up regarding my daughter having temp teachers in science because her reg teach was off sick.

my daughter asked me to intervene as she thought she was not making the same progress as her peers - so i send an e-mail today.

in the e-mail i stated that i had two bones to pick

1. lack of consistency with science teaching
2. that the sats determined my daughters place in the class hierarchy next year.

i stated that as far as i was aware SATS were to monitor progress of school.

anyway.

teach phoned me up - a more obnoxious person i have never ever spoken to in my entire life.

after lengthy conversation it turns out teach is coming back ( hopefully) after xmas.

and that sats were to appraise the performance of the child.
oh says i - i thought they were a govt initiative to monitor the performance of the school.

yes says she and the child.

no says i - i think its just the school
yes says she - the child can move upor down depending on performance - anyway your child can come see me for extra work.

i am now diverted grrr

then says i - but after 3.5 - 4 hours a day at school its a bit rubbish that daughter has to ask or extra work

well mrs custardo - i am still here. i haven't done my marking - we all have to work extra.

fucking fuckity fuck - wish i was more articulate -bnecuase all i could think was.... well my daughter will be lucky to be in your position as a paid qualified anything at this rate.

but i didnt't i thanked her for her time.

point is this.

are sats for a school to monitor the performance of its children and sort them into classes based on this performance

hence

i hasten to add qwuality of work and teaching goes along with what class your in - because those less capable just dont get the same quality and thats that.

so chances of moving up are shit - not the point

point is

is there any quote, source anything i can use to send to this obnoxious person to prove i am right.

if i am

am i
maybe i'mn ot

i have always taught my children not to worry - my daughter worries - about exams becuse its only to measure the school - not them.

anyway opinions and importantly quotes or links wanted please.

You sound like you have a very busy time of it. I wont explain my home life because it is not helpful to this thread, but I am busy too.

Mine don't do any of the schools clubs, they love the school but they cant get away quick enough.

Yr 6 dd goes to a dance (street dance) club around the corner which works out at £2.35 for 45 mins. Same cost as some would pay for a magazine. Other DD goes to brownies. Not all clubs are expensive and i do believe it is good for them to mix outside of all the competitive stuff and pecking order that goes on in schools. Its great when they make new friends that arnt even in the same school i think.

You are doing a great job, the reading idea is fab.

Being a parent is tough when we still feel like kids ourselves somtimes. Just do your best and that is what you are doing.

What is it about SATS that teachers don't like? Genuine question as I'm at the start of the education thing (oldest 6) and hear lots of negative talk about them but don't really know why? Ditto the national curriculum.

Cant give you the teachers side of it but maybe someone else can.

i think part of it is that teaching becomes teching to pass tests rather than teaching for learning.

we had a fab science teacher at secondary school who was in his last year before retirement. he used to do one hour a week of 'non curriculum' science. we could spend the hour with him asking about anything we liked, varying from how do they make maltesers to how do you get flowers in different colours and what came first, the chicken or the egg.

we too had a teacher like that in physics.

i loved physics. but i am typically science and maths dumb.

be brought it to life. no longer was is lolecules and litmus paper it was theory!!

and if only

and not long intothe future we should be able to....

it was awe inspiring.

i see my children from year to year go great guns at different subjects. fully enthused 13 year olds. this is all down to the brilliance of the partic teacher.

i recently sent in beggin letter asking for my son to stay in his science group - he isn't going to be a scientist. academically he's done for - but his face lit up after school telling me about these science lessons - the head of year said he could ask for extra homework and work his way up.

which wasn't the point - he wont get a science gcse - but seeing him enthused about ANY kind of learning was fab fab fab.

it wasn't about the science it was about that immeasurable stuff talked about before, confidence, enthusiasm etc etc.

but arse nothing goes their way. now he hates science, doesnt give a shit whether he is there or not.

What about home education custardo?

Thinking of primary school SATS (which my mother marks) many of the questions and marking scheme are stupidly rigid.

E.g. When the Lenny Henry series Chef was on TV, picture of man in culinary-issue big white hat, letter and blanks underneath read c---, child has to fill them in. However, if child were to put in "chef" it would be wrong and score zero because the expected answer was "cook".

Then another question - science this time - was about why we have day and night. A fantastically detailed answer explaining the movement of the earth and sun and why a day would therefore end up with a dark period and a light period would not score full marks unless they assumed that the examiner was an idiot and specified that the dark bit was night and the light bit was day. Etc., etc., etc.

I do sympathise, it isn't good when teachers are off sick. Mind you sometimes it is unavoidable At the moment I am off work on comassionate leave while we sort things out for dh. I will go back in January, on a reduced time table, and I will only be teaching Sixthform.

In part this is because if dh gets admitted to hospital the cover is easier for sixth form for the school to organise at short notice. In part it is because teaching sixth form is far less stressful for me, and at the moment I am still very raw and emotional.

In general the SATS results are not simply better in bette classes. At Ks3 we are expected to get all children to improve 1.0 over the three years. In our school we are expected to get 1.1. Last year my kids make 1.6. However I get less and less lower school teaching and more and more GCSE and sixth form. I love teaching the younger kids, I also love teaching the kids who struggle, but more and more I am being shifted away to more 'academic' teaching, where the school feels they will get 'more' out of me.....sad but it is the way that things are with the system the school has to work in.

Part of the problem is that it is becoming ever more difficult to get reasonable and good people to stay in teaching because if the abuse they get from kids and parents (not the case with you ccusty I know)

I am a secondary science teacher (or at least I have been, and will be again!)

I LOATHE the KS3 SATs with a passion. They ruin what should be the BEST year of school science - where the children are really getting the hang of things, and you should be able to do some really exciting projects, but no - they have to be coached for an exam.

All the schools I have worked in have used SATs results as a basis for KS4 setting, but with considerable room for adjustment at the boundaries between sets. It does take some explaining to parents who feel their child has been harshly treated. As you would expect, "It is my professional judgement that this is the most appropriate set for your child" does not cut it with many.

I also wholeheartedly disapprove of giving children "extra work" to help them. Is it because your dd wants to cover some of the work they have already done again?

no, its becuase she wants to learn stuff that her peers have learned and her class hasn't got to becuase of teacher shortages. its been book based becuase they can't get a science teacher - just a teacher - so there are health and safety things to consider with regards to practicals when teacher isn't a qualified science teacher which is a good reason - just pants for my daughter.

any way she went today and asked for more homework from teacher who i spoke to yesterday and got told this
"she looked at me funny, like i have a mother who is THE DEVIL making me ask for more homework"

pmsl

she asked me to intervene - she gets the consequences!

wouldlove to home teach. unfortunatley i work full time to afford the many riches we have

and if you did you'd never be able to do many of the most rewarding practicals/ demos in science lessons, because of H and S considerations.

It is a seriously life enhancing lesson when you show kids that lobbing a bit of potassium into water makes it catch on fire. Think of that , a metal catching fire in front of your eyes!

The lasck of practical is an issue when you have cover lessons. Non science teachers wouldn't be safe, in all honesty.....in the same way we are not safe to cover PE lessons.

Thankfully the department I work in are all giving up their 'free' lessons to cover my classes.

My dd is due to do her SATs next year and I will be informing the school that I will not allow her to do them.

I disagree with them vehemently. 7yos should not be tested. It is upsetting for them, it's unfair and horrible. This country is far too pushy on young children, they are being forced to grow up far too quickly in every way imaginable. So I'm making a stand, my children will not take part in it. It's not for their benefit, it's for the school and the government.

As much as I hate SATs and agree with people on here without them I wouldn't have even realised how much DD2 was slipping behind in yr5.
At KS1 she had all high level 3s then at parent cons at the start of yr5 the teacher mentioned she was at about level 3 in English and Maths after doing his autumn term assessments.

I went berserk because no one had mentioned or said in her reports how she wasn't progressing and she had never felt she was struggling.

The school hadn't picked it up because she was still within the average expected and probably never referred back to KS1 results from the Infants school.

Myself and DP, who was a governor at the time,
made it plain to the head that we were not happy and things improved. We monitored her work more carefully, she was given extra to do, and then tutored for a few weeks in basic Maths to get her number work up to speed. At KS2 she then got level 5s which is what should have been expected.

Without the SATs we would not have become aware until secondary school that she was underperforming. (horrible word, but you know what I mean)

MB - if i did - i couldnt do science anyway as i am shite. fully take on board what teacher said about H&S.

am sure there is a lesson behind metal catching fire all sciency and teaches stuff. and seeing stuff before your very eyes must be wowwy for the ickle childrens.

so rhubarb, will she do them in senior school?

Any teacher that needs a sat result to gauge the progress of a child should be sacked immediately for incompetence.

Any teacher worth their salt will know way before any dumb government enforced test how that child is doing

Yeah, she'll do them at senior school!

Underachieving in primary school? Never!

Children are individuals and work at different rates, this is very obvious in primary school when 6 months of difference can be a gulf between 2 children! My dd is a summer child so is quite a bit younger than some of those in Yr 2, she also spent 2 years being educated in France, so she is behind. But I am aware of this. I do think her school is pushy, they have excellent Ofsted results and 100% in many of their subjects. She gets a book to read every night, spelling test every week, maths homework every week and a literacy sheet every night. She's just 6 ffs!

The SATs will not benefit her at all. They are not meant to benefit the children, how can 7yos benefit from being tested in that way? It just creates competition between schools and makes pushy schools even pushier.

I hate SATs too. It does help to set a child in GCSE classes but even then its not exact. In English they mark really badly. We have had kids who are quite clearly really really brainy and are teacher assessed at level 6 or 7 getting 5s, lower than kids who can barely string three words together. The marking criteria for KS3 English is like a jungle with grids going across A3 sheet of paper. Its soo dull teaching to a test. And now we have to do Richard the II or Dick the shit which unfortunately has loads of characters in it who are are called Edmund or Edward or both their names and their dukedome names which my poor old second set are going to find really tricky. And my performance is monitored against these children getting their predicted gradings (based on flawed data from KS2 SATS and CATs score and possibly inside leg measurements). I'm lucky, we are in a 'good' school and most kids are well motivated with great parents but we also have some really damaged kids and ones who find being in school very difficult for a number of reasons and I still have to get across the finer points of subordinate clauses (no that's not Santa's children) and semicolons. Crusty, you sound great. The sort of mum you want to go to the pub with during parent's evening (I refuse to do 'teacher speak' - parents get exactly what it says on their child's tin. Likewise I am a totally disorganised and fairly crap mum who having dealt with 92E is not particularly patient with her own kids . .