Does Sats matter for grammar schools

[SnappyAmberSwan]

I get that Sats play a vital role in my child's education but do they count for grammar schools.I kow that they predict GCSEs scores but apparently grammer schools take their own tests in year 11. Plus why does Sats matter? Since they've already passed the test set by the school, is there anything I'm missing. In case my child doesn't do well in Sats does it matter?? Thats all I'm concerned about. Thx ✨

Progress 8 scores ard calculated in the same way for all mainstream state schools, regardless of any internal testing carried out by the school itself; the latter will inform how the individual school assesses its individual pupils' likely outcome at GCSE, given how they are actually doing academicslly, regardless of what they 'should' get.

Progress 8 aims to capture the progress that pupils in a school make from the end of primary school to the end of KS4. It is a type of value-added measure, which means that pupils’ results are compared to other pupils nationally with similar prior attainment. Every increase in grade a pupil achieves in their Attainment 8 subjects counts towards a school’s Progress 8 score. Progress 8 is calculated for individual pupils solely in order to calculate average Progress 8 scores including school Progress 8 scores. Schools should not share individual pupil progress scores with pupils or parents.

A Progress 8 score is calculated for each pupil by comparing their Attainment 8 score with the average Attainment 8 scores of all pupils nationally who had a similar starting point, using assessment results from the end of primary school. In 2016, changes were introduced to KS2 outcomes in English reading and maths. They are now reported as scaled scores instead of national curriculum levels (more information is available in the measurement of prior attainment section). The greater the Progress 8 score, the greater the progress made by the pupil compared to the average for pupils with similar prior attainment. A school’s Progress 8 score is calculated as the average of its pupils’ Progress 8 scores. It gives an indication of whether, as a group, pupils in the school made above or below average progress compared to similar pupils in other schools. • a score of zero means pupils in this school on average did as well at KS4 as other pupils across England who got similar results at the end of KS2 • a score above zero means pupils made more progress, on average, than pupils across England who got similar results at the end of KS2 • a score below zero means pupils made less progress, on average, than pupils across England who got similar results at the end of KS2

A negative progress score does not mean pupils made no progress, or the school has failed, rather it means pupils in the school made less progress than other pupils across England with similar results at the end of KS2.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6620e69b651136bd0b757d4f/Secondary_accountability_measures_-2023-2024_guidance-_April_24.pdf

SATs don't 'count' for grammar schools only as much as in, no grammar school uses the applicant's SATs scores as an entrance test. But they will be used in the calculation of P8, same as for a non-selective school, and on an individual level, may be taken into account for initial setting in e.g. Maths.

Generally speaking, no not at all. All the grammar schools I’ve taught in or have experience of have used their own testing to determine sets. This is sometimes done at the very start of year 7 or sometimes at Christmas. The SATS scores might be used to determine progress 8 but that has no impact on individual children. Even target grades were decided by teachers and in-school testing.

If my child has to take SATS, I would encourage to get an average score. It means less pressure in the future actually.

My kids went from private prep to grammar school (along with about 20% of their year group) and none of those pupils did SATs so it’s definitely not crucial!

Not in my experience. Two girls at grammar and never used. Only set for a couple of subjects in year 8 and it was based perfomance in Y7 not SATs form two years ago.

I disagree with this advice.

SATs results should reflect the student's ability/learning to that point. As has been explained, secondary schools will be judged on how well the students perform at GCSE based on predictions from their SATs results.

If a very capable student achieves only 'average' SATs results like @GHGNhas suggested, the secondary school has a pretty easy job to keep the student on that trajectory, and even a relatively easy job to 'add value' to that student such that the student achieves better GCSE grades than predicted, which makes the school look good. However, the school may not encourage the student to fulfil their real potential if the target is artificially low, because the school is focussing on those other students that aren't meeting their targets. Therefore the 'bright with average SATs' student may need be under less 'pressure' but may also under-achieve throughout. (Think of a student capable of 7s but predicted 5s and achieves 6s - the school is happy, the student is indeed under less pressure but their results don't match their ability.)

Some people go the other way and tutor their children to achieve better SATs results in the hope of them being placed in top sets in secondary (not talking about grammar schools here.) The problem with this is that inflated SATs results achieved after extensive tutoring could lead to the child continually 'failing' against their targets in secondary school as the school tries desperately to improve that child's grades to achieve 7-8s when actually 6s would reflect their natural ability.

Surely it's better for a child's SATs results to reflect their ability. That way, they will have realistic targets and will hopefully receive appropriate support in secondary school.

As @MarchingFrogs explains so well, SATs are on students' records throughout secondary, and the schools are measured on how they perform at KS4 relative to SATs.

However, at the most high-end grammar schools most students would have achieved 110-120 in their SATs and will be expected to achieve 7-9 at GCSE anyway, so there is no need for the schools to pay much attention to students' actual SATs results as they will generally meet or exceed those government target grades anyway.

I would imagine SATs results would only be useful to such schools if they had any students that were performing at a much lower level than their peers. In those situations, the school would be slightly less worried if the student had got weaker SATs results.

You do realise this thread is about students at a grammar school?

I worked at grammar school and we absolutely hated the high SATS results that students came to us with. For many students, very little chance of a positive progress 8 score.

@GHGN thanks for the insight from a grammar school’s perspective.

I had a quick look online but didn’t manage to find the mapping between KS2 SATs scores and GCSE grades. Do you have any detail on that?

All my local grammars (Birmingham) have positive P8 scores that are generally higher than the local comprehensive schools, so I assumed that SATs scores might max out at a prediction of 7s at GCSE so there would be plenty of room for improvement. I would be very interested to learn that this is not the case!

P8, as you have found, can be highly misleading, especially in grammar schools. This is because they tend to have a high proportion of children who haven’t taken SATS. For the purpose of P8 they are therefore assumed to have the area average. Of course, most of these kids are way above that so when they inevitably get 7s and 8s it looks like they’ve had a huge jump.

It’s not an exact mapping but generally:
110+ 7, 8, 9
105-109 5, 6, 7
95-104 3, 4, 5
80-94 1, 2, 3

which specific grade they’re assigned depends on where their mark falls in the range

Thanks, @Moglet4 - I hadn't considered how progress would be tracked for those that hadn't done SATs. Certainly, DD says that a number of girls at her grammar school were privately educated for primary, so many of those won't have done SATs which could explain the school's good P8 score.

DD didn't do any extra work for SATs, but inevitably any children that had been prepared for the 11 plus would be well placed to achieve high marks in SATs - higher than they would have done had they not done the extra work a few months prior. Hmm.

The DfE used to publish the % of students included in the P8 measure ( a good estimate of the percentage from private primary / prep schools).

Unless they have totally changed how the measure is calculated, I think students without SATs are not included, rather than being given a notional ‘average’ mark.

DD started at grammar school this year and did SATS earlier in the year at her state school. The private school kids didn’t do them though, so I can’t see how it is that relevant at a grammar school. DD’s sats results were very similar to her 11+ results.

You’re right, they didn’t used to be but I believe they are now. There were some articles published last year about why the p8 score is skewed in grammars and that was one of the reasons. I’m not sure if it applies to all schools though

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6620e69b651136bd0b757d4f/Secondary_accountability_measures_-2023-2024_guidance-_April_24.pdf#page14

2023-24 guidance still says those with no KS2 results are not included in P8, though they are in Attainment 8.

Fair enough

SATs at grammar school? Nah, not really.

The worst case scenario is your child does poorly in their SATs and they're allocated to a weaker academic group in Year 7. The chances are that the school will identify an obvious misallocation within the first term and shuffle the classes. Problem solved.

No sets in our grammar school until mid Y7 either