If you're in favour of getting rid of SATS, then...

[emkana]

... do you think there should be no formal testing at all until... when? GCSE's?

I'm just wondering then if children don't need to be prepared to some extent to what it means to be sitting a formal exam?

(certainly not at 7 though...)

On the one hand I really don't like the SATS either, but on the ohter hand I feel a bit like some people are being a bit... sensitive about them? In Germany it's very formal to have tests constantly, from an early age, and that's proper tests with "sit at opposite ends of the table, put book up so can't look at neighbour's work" type conditions, and with grades from 1 to 6, and with pressure to get good enough grades otherwise you might have to repeat a year...
I am certainly not in favour of that but I'm wondering what the middle ground could be...

I think 10/11 is an appropriate age to start doing tests. I know what you mean about preparation for GCSE.

No, I would still expect my children to be tested (we always had tests at school).

The problem for me is not that the children are tested, it's that the pressure is on the teachers to get the children to a certain level, and the teachers in some (most?) schools pass that pressure on to the children.

normal not formal btw

really must start to preview...

The trouble with SATS is that the children end up learning to pass the test, rather than learning for the sake of knowledge and development. If a teacher has to teach to the test, she doesn't have the time to follow an interesting subject and develop it fully just because her class enjoy it or she has a passion for it.

When I was a child we had class tests every year, but the first 'formal' tests were at 11, whether they were entrance exams for secondary school or the 11plus. Because we weren't all sitting the same exams the teachers could not teach to the test, but had to give us a good, all-round preparation. Which included using published test-papers during the first term of the last year of primary school (exams, IIRC, where in Feb/March).

Return to those Good Old Days, IMO .

I think that pupils should be assessed to see what they have learnt and whether there are any gaps. There are many and numerous ways of doing this, and of course if the assessment is a formal one (eg an interview say, or a piece of coursework or indeed an exam), then there is a degree of merit in preparing children for the method of assessment.

My dcs are in a school which doesn't sit SATs, but they have tests, classwork etc and the teaching staff keep notes on what each child has learnt which helps them plan the work and lessons. As a result the school can't participate in league tables, but that doesn't seem to bother anyone.

miljee just posted this on the other thread, and I quote it here because I think it's a very interesting point:

"OK, I think what we all have to remember is where SATS come from. I started school in 1966, aged 4. It was entirely possible to leave school at 16 having, apart from the divisive 11+, NEVER BEEN TESTED in any way, shape or form. Schools could and DID in the case of my brother's secondary modern, send home glowing reports in years 7-10, then suddenly, in yr 11, what COULD have gone wrong? DB was 'fooling around', 'not concentrating', 'is disappointing'- all to account for the ONE CSE grade 4 he got. Transpires EVERY parent there got more or less the same report. SATS were introduced, imho, to highlight problems in a) general teaching (why HAS this entire class not improved one iota in 'x' years?) and b) the child ('ah, we have a documentable problem here, bring on the SEN'). I would FAR rather find out, via 'formal' testing that my DS is struggling at 7, not 16, thanks.

I personally have every faith in our DCs teachers. I can fully understand why SATS can cause such grief, (though shouldn't we be impressed that our 7 year olds, or 6 in my case, even KNOW there's a test on? MY DS2 didn't!). OK, KS1 SATS need a broader brush in that our DSs write at a glacial pace. But I so believe in the need for KS2 SATS.

See, the trouble is with NOT 'teaching to the test', whilst excellent in the hands of a clever and inspirational teacher, can lead to 'teaching to nothing in particular'."

oi you lot this thread is supposed to turn into a debate - where is everybody?

Briefly...

tests/exams are a great way of assessing somebody's ability to work from memory and under a time limit.

That's about all IMO.

That's not true Theo's Mum. A good exam will assess memory and the ability to apply that knowledge.
For example: you could test someone on their 7-times table and that would just be a memory trick. A more astute assessment would ask someone to calculate how many tiles you need to cover an area 7x5.

just so you know that's exactly how sats are done .. opposite end of table, can't talk, can't look at neighbour

I wouldn't want tests until final year primary or secondary school

I don't want a term of practice tests to get them used to it ... because you just can't spring a 45 minute test on a child without working up to them being able to sit in silence and concentrate for that long .. so even schools that profess that they don't prepare .. they do

Ours (independent) is similar to LM's - no sats - as they felt the preparation interfered with the actual curriculum teaching. The kids intermittently do CATS and PIPs which are more about identifying areas of potential and roughly benchmarking each child against their performance in class and internal exams. So the results are focussed on the child rather than school performance.

Who decided that teachers have to 'teach to the test'? Parents don't ask for it; the profession has brought it on themselves.

It might be an idea if the Government no longer published the raw scores (although each child could have theirs, individually) but only published detailed analysis of Value Added.

i think there should be a test every year

and if the child isn't up to a basic standard, that child stays behind. ( excluding SN)

I think testing is fine, on an informal basis. the real problems with the SATS as far as I am concerned is that:

it puts HUGE pressure on the children for no real benefit afaiac
and (related) the tests themselves are so specific as to be virtually meaningless (I am talking mainly about the English ones, having now seen lots of these!)

It's funny people are basically saying that something like SATs ARE okay at Y6, but not Y2.

But most schools manage to do Y2 SATs in a very low key way, anyway. It's the stress on Y6's that many MNners are complaining about.

Surely the biggest problem isn't the fact of testing, but the way the tests are standardised, making it easy to compare schools, and hence putting pressure on schools to compete with other schools?

Fembear's suggestion is therefore probably a good compromise.

Also, the schools end up doing lots of mini-assessments so they can track whether a child is a 3b or a 4a or whatever, so schools end up focused just on the SATs. It's these extra tests that are currently stressing my Y3 child out and I was NOT pleased when he came home and announced "I'm a 3b, mum!"

I'm not chuffed at all about a child being reduced to a relative stat so early.

From what I got from the panorama program, its the publication of the tables that is causing this "fear" of SATs/testing. Schools obviously want to be seen as doing well or higher up on the tables. This creates stress for the teachers which gets passed on to the kids.
However, I believe its the media that creates this problem, by ranking the results and thus creating this league table that most "not so high achieving" schools dislike.
The government does not rank results, but merely publishes the performance of each school by Local Authority.
Therefore, I agree with emkana, that we do need some form of testing to see how our kids are doing. The problem is with the mgnt of these tests, that needs consulting.

My Ds's schools test the kids on an annual basis (from yr1) without the kids knowing about it.

Wales has got rid of all SATS and the teachers are now able to assess the children like they used to.

Fenbar, indirectly it is the parents who ask for the teachers to teach to the test.

It works like this. SATS are one of the major ways of measuring a school's performance. This is included in the OFSTED report and ends up determining where a school ends up in the league tables. Parents choose schools based on OFSTED results and league tables. Therefore a lot of pressure is put on teachers by school management to ensure the best possible SAT scores because, ultimately, the next year's intake is determined by how far up the league tables they are. Low rolls can mean less funds for the school.

It's a vicious cycle. If one of the determining factors in your choice of which school your child goes to is either the league tables or the OFSTED report then you indirectly have been complicit in the preassure for teachers to teach to the test.

I have no problem with kids having exams in primary school...we used to have them twice a year.

What I do object to is their teacher being expected to coach them for the exams for weeks in advance. I don't blame the teachers per se, the pressure is on them to show that their kids are making progress, that the school has good value added scores. If the school isn't seen to 'perform, parents take their kids elsewhere

I train the kids to pass KS3 sats. because if I don;'t , parent who take an interest in their kids education will take them elsewhere. And on the whole I'd rather teach in a school where lots of the kids have parents who value education

It sucks, but it is the damn silly game we are expected to play

After the media hoo ha of the last few days, I asked ds (13) what he thought.

His opinion is that SATs are quite a good thing, as they give you an idea of where you are in relation to others.

In the Yr6 SATS, he did no revision and didn't bat an eyelid, as he'd already got thru' the 11 plus.

He says he's not bothered about the next ones (Yr9) as they'll be helpful in working out what his targets should be for GCSEs.

So not all children get wound up by them.

SATS are a pretty recent invention - I think we managed all right without them!
The problem is that they are national and published, and the stakes are so high for the schools that they distort learning.
I have no problem some form of testing which is set by the teacher to assess what the students have learnt - but I don't think this is really necessary until secondary school level when students should be learning more independently. If they need to do assessments at primary school, again these should be informal and done by the teacher and certainly don't need to be under 'exam conditions'.
We started with formal end of year exams in secondary school, and I think that is soon enough in terms of practice for unseen exams (which should never be the be all and end all of learnign anyway).

I don't object to the tests themselves, but I do object to headteachers and teachers telling silly lies, like 'this is a chance that will never come again', 'these tests are really important for your future'.

I don't care how much pressure they're under; I am on temporary teaching contracts myself and will almost certainly lose my job if my students don't do well enough in the finals- I still wouldn't tell porkies to put them under more stress. Not ethical IMO.

Dd's friend who is off sick with suspected glandular fever went hysterical at the thought of missing this wonderful opportunity; she is doing all the papers at home.

Dd, who is also off with a virus infection, is also doing the tests at home- but with a cynical smile inside. She, unlike her friend, understands the workings of the exam system. The problem is, every time she hears the adults in charge of her education spouting silly nonsense, it undermines her belief in their authority.

ihave a yr6 and a yr2 who have sats this year
tbh i dont really object to the yr6 doing them it is a bit of a wake up call to the realities of secondary school and gives them the notion of preparing for and sitting tests. i do strongly believe that there has to be benchmark at the end of primary both broadly to stop children leaving primary without basic skills and personally for the child to move onto secondary with. what is hard round here is they have 11+ in dec then start revising for sats in may and theresnot a lot of time for fun and braoder educational activites in that time
i do however object strongly to the yr2 sats - it is a myth in many schools that no pressure is put on the children - my dd says she is doing tests and if she does not pass she will not get into yr3! what i really object to in yr2 is the testing of the whole age group at the ame time, i think children this young should be assessed at the same chronological age as there are such vast differences in maturity and learning skills at this young age. my dd who is not yet 7 spent a good 18 months in school; before she was ready to learn and now is going to have marks written down when i know that the school should have much higher expectations of herthan they will have going into yr 3

My dd has a July birthday and becuase of this when she did her Yr2 SATs the standard was not as high as they could have been if she had been a September birthday. She was regarded as being average for the rest of her primary years but got 5s in Yr 6.

When she went to secondary it became apparent that she was above average and at yr9 got 6 for English and 7 for both Maths and Science. She is now taking her GCSEs and is expected to get As and A* for most of her exams.

There is a major difference in ability between a child with a September birthday and a child with a birthday at the end of the school year particularly in the first few years at school.