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!

They are not important at all nothing for her depends on them. She will be reassessed all the time at High School re making sure she's in the right class etc. It's only Schools wanting decent results for their tables. Just tell her to do her best and that is good enough.

Have heard of horror tales of schools trying to impose mandatory SATS breakfast sessions , after school and homework clubs. From my experience as a governor those schools who put the most pressure on the children, haven’t covered the curriculum properly and are concerned that their poor teaching is going to be seen publicly.

As pp it doesn’t mean anything really in terms of say cv or qualifications, but frustratingly they are often used to map the flight path for gcse and set a target grade in all subjects at secondary school. So dd who got top marks has always had a target grade of 8+ whereas ds got more average SATs and I would sit through parents evenings where they would say he’s scored full marks in his latest assessment so should easily achieve his target of 5. So I was like then increase his target!! So it’s followed him around like a bad smell and set the teachers’ expectations whereas dd has always just been expected to excel. Ds is now in y13 with a Cambridge offer so he’s shaken it off hopefully now, but I’m sure it will have influenced his teacher assessed grades at gcse. Hopefully that won’t happen again.
In themselves though, SATs shouldn’t be a big deal and don’t affect anything like the 11+ does.

They shouldn't be limiting pupils' potential grades according to SATs. In every school I've taught in, setting was regularly reviewed, and so if someone was performing better than their SATs might have indicated, they would be able to move up to a more appropriate set.

Mine are late teens but their SATs results and CAT results were on every termly report through secondary and were both used to estimate their GCSE results from year 7. Our primary absolutely would have brought the SATs papers to our house if the child didn’t attend that week either for illness or parental objection. They do matter for the school and the child.

For what it’s worth a score of 100 isn’t the average as anyone with a knowledge of statistics would assume- it’s about 103-105 so under that is below average. Over 110 is above average/exceeding expectation.

Ds was moved in top sets but his target grade stayed at 5, as this is a baseline against which secondary schools can show progress beyond predicted progress. Just frustrating that teachers often failed to look beyond it too. At the end of the day, gcse and a level exam results speak for themselves (unless teacher assessed).

My child's year 6 teacher is using the words 'pass' and 'fail' in relation to SATs. She's also told the kids that if they don't do very well in the 83 million mock tests she's had them doing they won't be allowed to do the topic work or Art so they can focus on the tests.

During my discussion with her about this, I told her if this didn't stop then my child won't be sitting them.

DT’s school didn’t do SATS but if they did I would have removed them for the test day.

btw - DT’s got all A’s in GCSE and A levels so lack of SATS never hurt

They shouldn't be limiting pupils' potential grades according to SATs. In every school I've taught in, setting was regularly reviewed, and so if someone was performing better than their SATs might have indicated, they would be able to move up to a more appropriate set.

This makes much more sense!

I have today had my year 7 DSs first school report. His expected grade in every subject is grade 7 (from academic ones to PE, food tech, art etc). He would never get a 7 in art. The predictions are based on his SATS - possibly combined with the CAT test he did on entry. Other than be a check on the school, it is used for this. His elder sister had all 8s and 9s as her predictions but she stressed over the SATS so much that she did a lot of past papers to ensure she got good marks. She wish she hadn't bothered and inflated her grade when her reports often showed red when she was falling short in some subjects. I guess SATS are important as they will influence their predicted grades so they will see them a lot from that point of view, but at the end of the day predictions are just that. A child can not do well in SATS but still get grade 6+ at GCSE, my son with his grade 7 predictions may fall well short and it's the actual GCSEs that count, and not the prediction.

If your child is likely to get SATs scores that are in line with their ability then it's fine.

If they are not, then better not to have them.

My DD has severe dyslexia, very high VR and NVR scores and massively underachieved the whole way through primary. Didn't learn to read till she was 7, barely wrote a thing until we taught her to touch type and moved her to a laptop at the end of Y6. If she had done SATs I dread to think what her secondary flight path would have looked like.

Her secondary used NVR for banding tests prior to admission and then CAT tests in Y8. The combined scores for these along with teacher assessment has determined their GCSE predictions and sets. DD has 8 as her target grade across the board and the teachers push her to achieve her potential.

Had we done SATs then I suspect she would have been allowed to coast along somewhere near the bottom.

You can as a parent pull your child from SATs - the school won't like it though.

I don’t think it is helpful to tell children that SATS don’t matter. The narrative should be more about doing your best and that being the important part rather than your score.

My DC didn’t do SATS (COVID) and I think this did no favours in preparation for secondary, where they test often (assessment weeks). Y6 SATs are taken at the end of their primary setting, in a place that they feel safe.

It’s normal to feel anxious - I strongly feel that children need reassurance and recommend conversations with school about how they can support this without telling our children that they are a waste of time - this is not helpful.

Maybe I was right or maybe I got it wrong but I never gave SATs a second thought. The school claimed to be boycotting them then they gave the children a past paper anyway, a pointless protest. This was about 2010.