Headteachers have voted to boycott SATS....

[deaddei]

but in RL what will that mean?
Will some schools not do them?

I know that QCA tests and KS2 SATS are similar as I have said before my DS has done QCA tests every May since he was in Y3 My eldest DD has already done KS2 SATS and did really well in them (all level5's) she did them in 2008 when there was the great marking fiasco we had to wait for her results which we finally received on her last day at primary school. She got level 5's for all three tests maths ,literacy and science and her papers were one of the few not queried by the school(even if she had got slighter higher marks it was not going to achieve a higher level). M y DS has actually done her papers as part of his practice papers and he got level 5's in maths and literacy (they are now not doing science)so I think I feel confident he will be fine I just hope that they will do something as the kids in his class are all ready now to sit them . This week they have done Mental Maths tests every day and past maths and literacy papers.

Well, they shouldn't! Even Ed Balls, sensibly for a change, says they shouldn't be over-preparing like this.

I dont see this as overpreparing , 3 weeks before the SATS I think is about right they didnt come home with bundles of practice papers to do over Easter holidays as I am aware some schools have done round here where we are and also looking at BBC news site there is a headmaster of a school in Sheffield saying that this is why his school will be doing the SATS as he would not feel right having given his Y6 children practice papers to do at home over Easter for them to be told when they came back to school that they would not now be doing the tests.I think it is a bit naive to think that schools all over the country will not be doing the same as ours in Y6 ie some form of practice papers every day so close now to the SATS, from what I read on here from other posters this seems to have been going on at least once a week since the start of Y6!

Busymummy - you yourself said "since January they have been doing mock papers every week". That's over preparing in anyone's language.

They aren't supposed to do this - Y6 have the right to a broad and balanced curriculum. The powers that be insist that should happen, we know in reality it doesn't in some schools. It isn't fair on the children. Yet another reason why SAT tests are not a fair or just assessment.

Feenie apologies having read my post I did say that but what I meant to say was one a term- they did practice papers for maths with mental maths and practice papers for English in January, then again after half term in February. Over Easter DS came home with A CCP book in English and Maths in which he had to complete two pages. Have gone back to school this week and so far has done 2 mental maths tests (missed yesterdays as he was doing a project for school council)and one short Literacy paper and one long.We shall see what he has done today when he comes home from school.

alicatte I'm going back a few posts here but it is the situation that you describe of holding back the bright mathematicians until everyone in the class is ok with the basic work that really makes me despair of the state system. My DS1 scores between 134 and 141 on every standardsied test he does, and always has. His mathematical ability is very good. His knowledge, however, is limited by the situation you describe. We are moving him to the independent sector for his secondary education.

Hello!
I began this thread and it's certainly taken off.
But I still am unsure as to what schools will do in SATS week. We haven't had any information from our school, but from the amount of practice papers they're doing at the moment (4 yesterday ffs) I'm assuming they still want to be near the top of the league tables

deaddei I'm afraid the answer at the moment is your guess is as good as anyone's. Some schools will boycott, others will not and will probably use old SAT papers to assess children (internally marked) and report to parents. At this point I don't know what will happen in my school. Our staff are keen for the SATs to be administered but the final decision is down to our head and then we will need to see what the LA response will be.

Our heads have a meeting on Monday - LA have said they will support them in a boycott if they are unanimous, but not otherwise.

Our LEA have fallen out in hilarious fashion with the NAHT - war of letters very funny. All going ahead in a boycott in our area.

Where the headteacher at your school is a member of the NAHT or the NUT

Where the headteacher at your school is a member of the NAHT or the NUT, they will make the decision about whether they are following the action and boycotting the SATs. If they do so, then they will be making the decision that the SATs will not be conducted in your school. No NASUWT classroom teacher, deputy headteacher or leadership team member should accept the delegated responsibility from the headteacher for administering or conducting the SATs. The responsibility for the SATs not taking place is a matter for the headteacher and the governing body.

Ed Balls says schools should suspend heads who boycott SATs
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article7111126.ece

yes we got that news today/.....

Sounds desperate to me. Our governors are fully supportive.

Ed Balls is too busy running around trying to get re-elected in Morley - and isn't able to say the boycott is illegal, because it isn't.

There is not a logical argument that can be made to boycott SATS. After all SATS is just a name for an end of primary school test that is marked in an objective manner to report on the level achieved by the child in the key subjects and indeed the performance of the teacher and school.

It is not useful to parents, schools and government to have only internal teacher assessment at this very important stage for the child. With the best will in the world the teacher assessment could be biased and subjective.

Objective testing is what the child will be encountered with in entrance exams taken at the beginning of Year 6 for other schools and/or testing at the start of Year 7. Surely it is better for the child to do the test in a familiar environment at the end of primary with familiar teachers rather than have to take the test in their first term at a new school with unfamiliar teachers and friends/surroundings.

The teacher/school position just does not make sense.

The children in my experience,as has been admitted by teachers in these message boards, enjoy taking the tests on the whole and are even asking to take past tests whilst this boycott is taking place!!! Surely that shows that the children are not stressed and it is in fact the way that schools administer the tests, i.e not over practising etc.. that makes the difference.

In every walk of life the children will have to learn that they are often judged by a relative stranger in a snapshot test situation. The more they get used to this the better they will perform. I would be very concerned if the first outside marked test my child performed in was the GCSE!!

Basically, tests are done all the time at school and whatever test is set, it is human nature that the teachers will cover the areas required to pass that test. So the "teaching to the test" excuse is just not valid.

The teachers have no right to boycott when they do not have a formal vote or mandate from the very parents and children they are representing.

It seems entirely right and correct that junior schools should be judged by their perfomance and not push that judgement to the secondary level for any performance monitoring.

The teachers seem to resent the external marking? why? in every test situation in life it will be judged by an unbiased person? why not here?

If the junior schools are worried about league tables then why arent the senior schools worried by league tables? There will always be a table of results whichever way you look at it - it can either be open or closed, and open (with justifications for any poor performance) is always the way to go

One reason teachers object to the marking of the English tests is because the marking criteria is so simplistic, leaving no space to credit the most able for imaginative, creative analysis / language use etc.

As mentioned before, the English tests are frequently incorrectly marked and they have to be remarked and sent back to the exam board to be altered. This is a huge job for the school. Schools don't want them over or undermarked because it affects their value added scores.

Tests have been set in schools forever and should continue to be set. The problem with the SATS is that school funding and teacher's salaries are affected by them which means that it would require super human control not to over teach to the test. The effect of this is that if you had very bright students capable of doing amazing analytical work based on whole Shakespeare texts or Swallows and Amazons for example, you wouldn't. There isn't enough space to do really challenging work or to follow the lead of your class. This is tragic and is anti education. It's one of the reasons why children in independent schools, where SATS are not carried out, achieve more highly.

Many secondary schools ignore the KS2 SATS results and retest before setting etc.

External standardisation is important. There are many ways of allowing competent teachers to take control of this in a way that means their children are really allowed to LEARN - we should follow the GCSE model. Reading levels can be moderated by an external marker, as can examples of work and tests that allow students to demonstrate that they have met the requirements of the National Curriculum but are set by individual schools. There are many, many ways of externally assessing the same criteria that don't supress opportunities to learn.

Test to assess learning, to allow children to experience the feeling of being under pressure and being judged but don't set tests that curtail our children's education and put pressure on schools and teachers not to educate but to dot Is and cross Ts.

Secondary schools don't care because they are being primarily judged on GCSE and A Level results which are generally much more accurate assessments of students' learning. For English the specifications give a wide range of learning opportunities and allow individual teachers to tailor learning to thier class. Imaginative, highly intelligent, original work can be credited. This is not possible with the current SATS.

The SATS should be scrapped and external moderation of assessment (including of tests where children feel under pressure) should take place but not as they stand. The boycott should be of next year's tests so that the children can benefit from a year of extensive, passionate teaching and assessment. I'm not sure what difference a boycott makes now when the children's education has already suffered and they've prepared so much for them!

If the way the tests are marked are the problem then that should be addressed not boycotting SATS altogether. There is always going to be differences of opinions on marking or errors, even with internal marking.

It seems that the schools that have boycotted have no problem administering the tests as long as they are not externally marked! indicating that it is the external objective view that is disliked not the actual tests. In the same way that children have to be objectively marked on their work, so should the teacher and this is the same in any job that is performance based.

The difference is that the external marker is objective and therefore has no agenda. Clearly the quality of those external markers has to be monitored and fixed if not of the right standard. The test should also include the ability to include an assessment of flair in appropriate elements of the test.

This is what the schools should be concentrating on refining and resolving, not boycotting tests.

Even at GCSE tests have to be remarked if incorrect. There will always be issues with testing, both external and internal, at any stage of school life.

This is just not a good enough reason for all the disruption that has been caused to the children for boycotting SATS at the last minute this year.

The tests are there to test the childs knowledge of the curriculum in the key subjects that all schools test on at 10/11, via entrance exams to other primaries and secondaries or indeed what they will be tested on in secondary school in the first term.

If they hadnt done any practise by sitting SATS in Year 6 they would be woefully ill prepared to sit the sort of tests that the secondary schools would confront them with in Year 7!

With entrance exams to secondaries and initial setting in secondaries you are not tested on history or geography, you are tested on English and Maths. Junior school should prepare you for this and the format of the questions which is very similar to SATS.

The children I know of were completely unaware that they were taking SATS and there was no over practising done. They mostly achieved good results, however where they did'nt this exposed genuine weaknesses which was very useful for the parent, and did not always correspond with what had been said by the teacher prior to the tests, even though these were found to be genuine weaknesses or gaps in the childs ability to apply the curriculum. After all that is what the tests teach the child, how to apply what they have been taught.

I agree that SATS should not dominate school junior life, but I know many schools where they do not and a wide curriculum is managed in addition to testing in this manner. After all, teachers will have to test no matter what test it is! Schools should be learning off the schools that manage SATS in a positive manner and understand that the majority of children enjoy them as has been proved when faced with them being taken away.

If teachers are spending too much time "teaching to the test" then this should be tackled by head teachers not just take away the test.

Any test that replaces SATS, as said before, will involve preparing the children for that test. Many teachers do not over prepare as said above and this should be the norm not the exception.

At the end of the day, teachers, just like in any job are judged by performance, and the performance is enabling the child to apply the learnt curriculum in a wider context but also in a test environment.

If the teachers salaries are linked to performance then that is the same as many other jobs, however in the wider world no one can boycott carrying out their performance criteria without agreement.

This is why external marking of the learnt curriculum is key for an objective view to move forward.

As I said in my last post, It is not the fact external assessment happens, it is that the SATS are rubbish. The curriculum is poor, the marking criteria are poor, the marking standards are hopeless. Yes, the specification needs rethinking and the external marking needs to be effective.

There are many fewer mistakes made with GCSE marking and GCSEs aren't as educationally reductive as SATS.

Again, as previously mentioned, the SATS should not have been boycotted at this point but plans should have been put in place to scrap them as they stand, for next year.

Of course teachers should be judged by performance like any other professional but not in such a way that damages the education of the children they are teaching.

Which head teacher is going to jeopardise their precious funding by forcing teachers not to teach to the test? The children don't have to know they are being over taught to the test. Children won't know this is happening unless their teacher constantly mentions it and gives out past paper after past paper. You can do all sorts of things that don't look like SATS practise but actually are.

Some people don't think children should be tested or teachers judged, I'm not one of them but the testing has to be worthwhile, surely?

"Again, as previously mentioned, the SATS should not have been boycotted at this point but plans should have been put in place to scrap them as they stand, for next year."

But how could this be done, bonnieblue? The last government wouldn't scrap them for next year, and the Conservatives want to overhaul them and introduce more 'rigour'.

Yes, yes, wrong word choice, scrapping probably not possible! Really I meant that the boycot should have been planned for next year so that the children could actually benefit from them not happening, rather than the sudden confusion that has been caused by the action being taken now.

Overhauling them may be a good idea but we'd need to know what they meant by rigour!

The boycott has been planned and has dominated the education headlines since last summer - however, industrial law means that any action has to take place with 4 weeks of a ballot.

My point is I strongly believe that chidren shouldn't be being following the curriculum for the SATS and lots of people seem to feel that their children have. It seems that the tests not happening has come as a shock.

I would hope that a clearly thought through boycott would have meant that the children weren't expecting to take the tests at all, especially if it's almost a year since the planning began. Surely the planning can happen well in advance and the ballot only 4 weeks before.

But that would be legal, if the government could prove through the courts that action to support a boycott had started in school way before a ballot.