Can a child be tested at level 6 when doing SATS in Year 6???

[drosophila]

Someone I know suggested that his child was a level 6 when he went to secondary and yet everything I read seems to suggest that 5 is the highest level they test for.

They wouldn't let ds try this so I don't think so. I may be wrong though but his teacher did say they were not allowed to test him.

There used to be a level 6 extension paper for KS2 pupils, but afaik it was withdrawn some years ago. So it is possible the child was tested at this level if it was more than three or four years ago.

COuld have been three years ago I guess. That's interesting. I know kids who are at level 5 in year 5 and my DS is at level 4 in year 4 so how do teachers deal with that.

A Y6 teacher can teacher assess at level 6, but the child would have to be extremely clever - I've only seen 2 children assessed at 6c in 15 years of teaching.

I teach y5 now - a child who leaves me at 5c would be on target to make achieve a 5a in Y6 - 2 sublevels is 'good' progress in Ofsted speak, as opposed to satisfactory progress.

Thought so. Ds was almost at level 5 at the end of year 4 so school is just like childcare at the moment. They try to stretch him but assessment wise he can't be assessed above level 5. I think level 6 is GCSE level (?????), there's a massive jump between level 5 and 6 as it's 4-5 years of work (I think).

So would that be published as part of the published league tables.

drosophila, a more able child would achieve something like a 3b at KS1, putting them on target to achieve a 5b in Y6. At halfway, Y4, they would hopefully be soemthing like a 4b - so teachers are used to that kind of level in y4.

Fluffy that makes sense then. I guess if a child is already at level 5a in Year 5 that is a great opportunity to explore other things rather than forging ahead to the next level. Philosophy for example. I would love to see somehthng like that in primary schools

Feenie thanks that make sense.

DD1 achieved level 5 in English in Year Four and level 5 in Maths in Year Five. She still had plenty to do in Year 6. When they are assessed at a particular level in Year 4 or 5 it means they have achieved that level in the areas of the curriculum that they have covered. There are still plenty of topics that they have yet to do. So if your year 4 child did a Yr6 Maths paper they are would be unlikely to get a 5a in it, because they simply wouldn't have covered enough of the curriculum.
Also there is a very big difference between a 5c and a 5a.

It's all coming together now. Thanks guys.

No, the school is obliged to publish their teacher assessment levels at end of y6 compared with last year's national teacher assessments though, so the data must be available somewhere.

It would be lovely but I think they are trapped by the national curriculum, there isn't space on the timetable in many schools for them to explore other things. The school ds is at now joins years 5 and 6 together for maths and english then streams them into ability, then streams each group further. There is more to school then maths, english and science though. Geography, History etc all play an important role in a child's education. Some schools focus less on these and more on the SATS subjects. It's a shame IMO. Philosophy would be really interesting.

I saw a school in North London on TV doing Philosophy with young kids and it was really interesting. One of the Mum's at DS's school used to teach it to young kids too and I suggested she approach our head and see if he was interested. It's the type of school that might do something like that.

Sounds good. I try and teach it to ds as he's always asking these sorts of questions but I don't know enough about it.

Jesus my son is on 3C for English in year 5. Christ. I knew he was behind but blimey!

btw i teach in a grammar school and we get kids to us who are supposed level 5 primary levels (even at SATS) and when they come to us they are reassessed for English and are usually lower.

All children are different stillenacht. I don't compare ds to anyone else as he's just him. He was a few marks off level 5 when he was 8 so I'm not sure where he'd be if they assessed him for level 6. I wasn't aware level 4 came in a,b and c. I was told by his school when he did key stage 2 that he couldn't be assessed higher then level 3 as they couldn't do it. I didn't know this was also divided into a,b and c. They don't tell the parents everything. Darn!

I think most schools stopped the level 6 tests a long time ago - DS who is 21 did it, but DD who is 19 didn't. They only did it in Maths & English though, as Science would have needed them to cover more topics. Usually somewhere between 1 & 3 of the 50-odd children in the year would get it.

sorry i didn't know all children were different, damn thats why i have been finding teaching tricky over the last 15 years

Don't be cheaky!

don't know about sublevels - can't spell cheeky yet have a genius as a DS.

yet mine is as thick as.... ah ain't life grand

I have no idea about them. They don't tell the parents things like this.

I don't think your ds is thick, he's not found his talent yet. He may excell at something he's not tried yet. My son has very little social skills so life isn't grand here either.

I can't spell. It's the ME/MS whenever they decide to diagnose it properly.

Lol @ stillenacht!

Your DS is not that behind in Y5 at 3c Spring term - could still achieve a Level 4 by SATs next year, depends whether you school spend all Y6 cramming (hope they don't, cos that's as boring as hell!). But, tbh, it really doesn't matter to the kids at all (and I speak as an ex-Y6 teacher), it's just a stick to bash the schools with.

The kids get reassessed as soon as they get into Y7 anyway.

We also often used to find the KS1 SATs utterly useless as a benchmark as they sometimes seemed massively inflated in comparison to what the child could actually achieve in a classroom setting.

I hate SATs as you can probably tell!