KS1 tests.. what do they count towards? Tips on helping my child please

[Hello55]

My child will be having key stage 1 tests next year.. what do these marks count towards? Will it determine what class she goes to based on ability level in juniors? Any tips on what I can do/books I can get to help prepare her?

Tia x

They make absolutely no difference at all. Ex primary school teacher here.
Don't worry about them or do extra workbooks, just support your child as usual, read with them, talk to them and promote a positive attitude to learning ... both socially and academically. They will be fine.

They don’t count towards anything
due to be scrapped

They do possibly count towards something - if your child takes their 11plus, and just misses and you need to selection review - you send all primary school reports in to prove they didn't perform to their best ability on the exam.

They are meant to be low key, not like KS2 SATS, so don’t put pressure on your child

The report will tell you the teacher assessment judgement which is the data that has to be submitted to the local authority, not the test result.

The test papers don't even support the teacher to make their teacher assessment because the tests don't correlate to the teacher assessment framework statements - hence why they're being scrapped.

What do you mean 'selection review?'

What do you mean 'selection review'?

What do KS2 tests count towards? X

Do you mean the SATS in year 2? If so they’re pointless stress that count for nothing and are really there to test the school. I’d just teach your child to not worry about them and just focus on supporting her learning generally

@Hello55 KS2 SATS also don’t count for anything and are there to test the school for league tables. They may be given to senior schools to let them know your child’s level, but they could easily give that information without SATS results

I teach Year 2. The tests themselves are just part of an overall teacher assessment based on lots of other evidence throughout the year. The results of the teacher assessments (including the test results as a part of the evidence) are used to produce national.league tables.

The data from the teacher assessments will be carried through the school as an indication of how the teachers should be expecting them to perform. If your child is considered just below the expected level, there will probably some extra support to push them. If they are Greater Depth at KS1, they will be targeted as Greater Depth for the end of KS2.

All of this could be done without sitting tests though. The Teacher Assessment Framework we use for fathering evidence is quite specific and the SATs papers test things that aren't on it.

If you want to support your child at home, I would recommend particularly working with them on their reading fluency so they can independently read and understand longer texts. If you want to do specific practice for the tests, the CGP workbooks are quite good.

KS1 SATS count for nothing. They mean nothing and don’t go on to their senior school-that’s KS2 results.

These teacher assessed grades are literally there to assess what gaps each child might have up to that point at the end of KS1, so that they can be addressed. Nothing else. Do not prepare for them or stress your kid out for them. They just do them in as routine lesson like they do their other assessments during the year-you’ll find that by now, they have already done their first lot of tests-we’ve done assessment week over the whole school so that we can track where the children are and identify and gaps/needs.

I thought they were being scrapped from 2023?

As someone intimates above, they are teaching assessments ie assessments of the teacher and school - used as a wider statistical measure. Please don't even mention to your child that they will be doing these tests.

Is your DC in y1 or Y2 @Hello55? My understanding is from Sept 2023 KS1 SATS are becoming optional as children now have baseline assessments in YR

Ds's teacher presented these tests as a quiz for them all to enjoy! Brilliant! There is no need to do any work beyond what you would do any other time, reading to them, listening to them read etc

The one thing I've heard a lot is that there is some inference required in the tests and the kids often really struggle with this - so for example it might ask how the child in the story felt - but the story doesn't say specifically how she felt. It might say she was crying so they would need to infer that she was sad/unhappy etc. Many though will just write 'she was crying'. I don't know if this has changed in the last few years, but still if you're reading to dc then worth talking around the story a bit and a good way to talk about feelings in general.

For me the KS2 SATS are a much bigger thing as they followed ds all through secondary, his predicted GCSE's were based on those so basically good SATS meant they had high expectations. There were books recommended by his state primary school which I got in the autumn and he did a little bit of each weekend (he didn't really get much homework). I felt it really helped anyway and would recommend that approach.

The tests are to assess the teacher not your child. Many parents boycott them

This is not true.

The KS1 papers are administered by the teacher anytime during May. If a child is off on the day they were due to do a paper, they will do it another day. You cannot boycott the whole month of May!

@mafsfan

They were a set day in my kids school

There are no set days in KS1. That would have been an individual school decision if they decided to administer them in that way.

Still if I child misses a test and returns to school during May they should sit the test paper missed.

I'm a KS1 teacher and LA moderator.