Year 6 SAT's

[onlythesparrow]

How 'important' are year 6 SAT's, really?

I've trying to reassure my very anxious daughter that she doesn't need to worry herself over the tests.

DS didn't do his due to covid, his secondary school tested the children over the first term before moving them around in to ability sets as needed.

We had parents evening for DD this week where her teacher talked about SAT's results, her scores in the recent mocks, how many more points she's expecting DD to get in the real thing. DD looked like she wanted to cry!

@onlythesparrow Honestly they are not important. Schools go on and on about them to the kids and it drives me mad , the results are for the school to see how they are performing because they want a good pass rate . Tell your daughter to just do her best and not to worry the high school will do as they have done with your son already .

I’m a teacher and even I will admit they’re not important, it reflects more on the school than it does on your child. Please reassure your daughter that it only matters that she tries her best.

In our county, the year 6 SAT scores are used to put the children into sets 1 through 6 in the core subjects when they go into secondary school. This is the only time the SATs actually matter but after the first term they are moved around again based on the grade of work they’ve done that term so it’s not permanent.

Thank you both! I was sure they weren't really as big a deal as the teacher was making out!

I think I'll see if I can work on something to help DD with her worries. In the past she's developed tics, feeling like she's gagging and even panic attacks though anxiety and I don't want SAT's to send her back there!

I would be complaining about the teacher - inappropriate to discuss this in front of your DD.
Perhaps the teacher is concerned about how she will be judged and is turning the pressure onto the children.
Very wrong - SATS are useless and a waste of resources.
Too much focus on the SATS and too little focus on actually teaching.

As daft as it might seem, SATS results are used for GCSE target setting. Schools can and will give additional targets based on secondary performance, CAT tests etc but the actual official targets are SATS based. So, for example, if your child does well in SATS , they will be expected to score highly in GCSEs. If they begin to underperform, the school will be very keen to provide support, extra tuition etc so your child achieves well and makes the expected progress. If they don't perform well, they won't be expected to do as well at GCSEs so MAY not get as much pushing ( I'm not saying this is always the case but schools will definitely focus effort and support on those who are at risk of not making sufficient progress)

Neither of my two DC who have taken sats knew that they took sats. They had no idea until later in high school when they saw something relating to year six sats. The older one took year three sats too and still had no idea they’d happened.

id be having significant words with the teachers at your DD’s school. Why do they need mock sats?!

And if the child isn’t at school on the day of the SATS - off sick, on holiday or the parents don’t want them to sit them?

The grades from the SATs will be used to create the Progress score the Secondary school gets. So the predicted grades don't really effect the individual pupil as such.

My DD is in Yr7... her reports have grades predicted from SATs then a grade predicted from her current attainment.

On transfer to secondary - if the school uses SATs results for setting, they'll probably ask the primary what they think the child would have got. They'd probably also use that for internal target setting.

When it gets to year 11 results and the government calculates the secondary school's Progress 8 score, a pupil who didn't do KS2 SATs is just omitted from the calculations.

I would disagree with the line primary schools seem to take that SATS are not important. Our (very nice, unpressured, nurturing) primary school spun this line, and I didn't find our until
year 9 that, in her case, the estimated SATs results submitted during covid and based on a practice paper half way through year 6, have informed her entire flight path for GCSE. This means these are the grades that the school
are predicting for her and will be happy with, and will remain on her 'flight path' even though she is currently exceeding this in most subjects. It means she has been put in less favourable classes in my view, and has impacted her school experience.
So in hindsight, yes I would be placing much more emphasis on SATS than I was falsely led to believe was necessary.

@onlythesparrow we looked at a past paper at home and walked through it plus the mark scheme so Ds1 could see exactly what it was all about. In school they had not done any practise papers so it was an unknown to Ds. It also meant that I was there to praise him, show him he could do it.

Yes they use these results for setting and a progress 8 score for secondary. Ds got an average mark for English and a slightly higher mark for maths. As Spaniel says they use it to track them through the years to make sure they are on target. Ds however exceeded his predictions in everything and the system would not let even SLT over write the grade. He was predicted a 6 in maths, they would allow a one grade increase to a 7 but he was consistently getting 9s and in the 90% for every test. Frustrating but this is their "flight path" through school so SATs are somewhat important but the way we always told the children in school was they have to test the school to see how well they are doing and the only way to test that is to test the children.

I would tell your daughter that it's not a test of how well she can do but more a test of how well the teacher can teach. The results are more important to the school than they are to your DD

This.

Yeah, they are important for all the reasons mentioned upthread. They set the expected standard so if your kid underperforms in SATS, they won't trigger the interventions available if they underperform across secondary school.

I certainly don't think SATs are important enough to risk your child's mental health. I
think you should talk to the school about the effect this pressure is having on your DD.

I would tell your daughter that it's not a test of how well she can do but more a test of how well the teacher can teach. The results are more important to the school than they are to your DD

Thank you, we have told her this.

Thanks for all the other points, that makes sense. I assume with DS, the secondary school must have just used his mock grades and his teachers own assessments of what he was expected to get.

I'm sure the teacher said DD got 112 in one of the literacy papers, but wanted her to aim for 115. Then maths was 97 so of course she wants her to reach 100. I understand, but honestly like someone else has said, mental health comes first.

I agree mental health comes first, but I put zero pressure on my daughter over the sats (that she didn't sit due to covid....) and while agreeing that kids need not to be stressed I might have paid more attention/ queried these 'predicted' grades the school submitted during covid. I am pretty sure not all local primary schools predicted the grades in the same way for example, and that some, including ours, underestimated - though this is a situation specific to covid I guess.

@onlythesparrow your dd has a similar disparity to my ds now year 7 - he got 114 in his reading paper and 102 in maths. This means the school have taken the average of this to estimate his 'flight path' across all subjects - so he is predicted 6 in GCSE English when he should be predicted at least 7, and this would also apply to other literacy based subjects. This is absolutely ludicrous in my opinion. The school use these 2 papers in 2 subjects to set the flight path for all subjects, including music, art, DT etc which makes absolutely no sense at all.
If they are going to use exams set age 11 to predict GCSEs at 16, then at least use maths to predict maths outcomes and English to predict English, not some weird hybrid .

If she has been put in less favourable classes, better to meet with her teachers for her to be moved?

My DC’s didn’t do SATS - thank goodness. Their school was able to assess them throughout their schooling.

@celestebellman yes I'd be interested to know what grades DS's secondary school were given for him. I remember his predicted grades were all within 'greater depth' before lockdown. He's 14 now and been in tops sets for everything but PE so far. Predicted GCSE's in the 6-9 range at the moment. I wonder if all schools work the same way, with regards to how they potentially limit pupils potential grades according to SATs?

@Parker231 yes, I did do that - beginning of year 9 was a nightmare for various reasons after plain sailing all the way through school , always being told she was doing well, getting greater depth etc at primary school (and not a great dea
of information from secondary school but I just assumed everything was ok).
My issue is that school are totally non transparent with the way they calculate these things, and the impact it can have. I knew nothing about flight paths etc until it led to
these problems.

F

We talked about trying to be 'ready for secondary'. So the better DD could do core maths and English the easier she would find secondary. We talked about how secondary has more regular tests so getting used to tests and learning test technique was useful. DD's school didn't put silly pressure on, so it worked out fine. SATs week was made rewarding for the DC too.

Your child's secondary school will be judged on the amount of progress that your child makes between the SATs and their GCSEs.

It's in the primary school's interest that the children overperform so that they look good. But it can mean that your child had overly ambitious targets for GCSE and ends up under a lot of pressure (extra interventions, mentoring etc) if she is not able to perform at that level.

I wouldn't complain about the teacher. It's not the teacher's or even the school leaders' fault that there is so much pressure about results. Unfortunately schools are very much judged on outcomes and teachers (and of course the children) work very hard for years preparing for exams like SATs so they absolutely want children to try their hardest and not take a "it doesn't matter" attitude.

In reality we all know the SATs results make no difference in the scheme of things for the child taking them (I'm sure hardly any adults remember their SATs results or state them in their CV) but they will have a long term impact for that school, the money it gets, it's reputation in the community and ultimately the ability to hire good staff to teach the next years of children as well.