Headteachers have voted to boycott SATS....

[deaddei]

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

Thanks Feenie, that is what I asked.

BeenBeta you stated that the current percentage of children leaving primary school unable to read was unsatisfactory:

"the number of children leavng primary school not able to read is too high"

What is it? You can give the number or a percentage. Please show your working.

Perhaps no kids were excluded from your village primary. Leaving aside the dubious notion that you, as a pupil, would have been party to that information, bear in mind that plenty of children attended special schools in the 1960s and 70s who would be in mainstream school today.

"Q: And please answer my previous question about the efficacy of SATs as a GCSE performance indicator compared to CATs.

A: I do not care what they call the exams. An exam is an exam and it needs to be rigorous and regular. The problem I have is teachers unions want to scrap SATs and replace them with nothing. They are against testing full stop - not just SATs."

That is not an answer to the question. If that were an exam, you would have failed. As it is, I will ask the question again.

-How do you rate the efficacy of KS2 SATs as a GCSE performance indicator against CATs for example?

Of course, if you don't know what CATs are, just ask . As long as you understand that this will prove that you haven't really got a clue what you are talking about.

What do you think about the current measures in place to measure teachers' performance? (Another one you missed and failed to answer. Tsk.)

Must try harder.

By BeenBeta Fri 16-Apr-10 18:25:04
Kids have not changed much since I went to school

I would strongly disagree that children haven't changed much in the past 40 years. I've seen a huge difference in children entering school in just the last 5 years.

Have you considered that many of those countries outranking us in the PISA ranking don't have formal testing until upper secondary education.

If SATs are scrapped - what guarantee do I have as a parent that they will be replaced with another set of tests, what guarantee do I have that they will be set to a national standard?

I wonder what age you would like formal exams to begin, clearly you don't feel 10 is too young, how about 9, or perhaps 8, maybe 7, no, surely six would be better, hang on, perhaps we should have exams for 5 year olds, how else will you know that teachers are doing their job?

Were your end of term tests "to a national standard" then Beta? Or was the teacher's judgement in question-setting and marking trusted? My first exams to a national standard were O levels (am v old!!), and that wasn't considered a particular problem.

And having marked public exams, and having had to give marks for something which demonstrated a significant lack of understanding because it had the right combination of words, and had to mark the same question wrong for another candidate who clearly knew what they were talking about but failed to use the right combination of words, I am not as confident as you in the power of the public exam to assess knowledge and understanding.

Our DSs have been tested (informally) since 5. Nothing wrong with that.

Some of the answers on this thread show a clear aversion to testing among teachers. It is clear that teachers unions are against all testing. That is wrong. We need testing.

Of course many good teachers do test and would test even without SATs. My problem is that without SATs, parents would have no power to force bad teachers to do it or provide the results.

Many private schools do not do SATs - but they do their own tests to a far higher standard than SATs and more often.

"It is clear that teachers unions are against all testing."

You need to back up your assertions with quotes. Are you sure you've ever passed an exam?

And can I assume you are not going to answer any of the questions I have asked you?

Or are you worried that you don't know the answers?

Just say if you don't understand the questions. I can break them down for you

I really don;t think you know how things work in education now. Perhaps you are thinking just of primary, and I admit I don;t know how it works there (although I strongly suspect it is the same), but in secondary I can assure you we test all the time. I don't know of any secondary in my area who does not assess and report half-termly, and I was on a thread with other secondary teachers a while back where it seemed a very widesread practice. I have no idea where you have got the idea from that teachers hate assessment. It would be impossible to do our job without assessing. Nobody knows that better than us. Objecting to a particular type of assessment, and the uses made of the results, is a quite different thing.

A higher, but national standard then in private schools. Right.

But not national. Doh!

" We need testing."

No we don't. Testing does not equal good teaching.

I can't believe any parent would actually want their child to do do SATs at 7 or 11- why??

I'd like to say that I respect the HT decision and reasons for it, but I am not impressed by the timing.

Why couldn't they have voted to boycott next year's SATS, but carried on with those planned to take place in 3 weeks time?

I have a bright but lazy Yr 6 boy. We have spend years impressing on him the importance of doing something when the teacher asks first time, no debate, whining etc.

Now, he will have the impression that the HT have suddenly decided not to bother, weeks away from the test that the class have been preparing for all year. This will take some explaining at home.

I want SATs (or something else) so I have an objective measure of how my DSs are doing against the expected level for a child of their age.

TheFallenMadonna - my DSs are in Prmary school. You test all the time yet SoupDragon says teachers dont need testing.

All of DSs homework recently has been practice SATs papers.

He seems to be doing rather a lot of SATs revision at school.

His teacher seems very stressed that DS may choose not to write anything during the exam (he has the potential to achieve 5's, but whether he chooses to complete the paper is yet to be seen).

I'd much rather he was learning something at school atm, rather than practising insanely for the SATs.

He seems to be unlucky to have had Y2, and Y6 teachers who take SATs VERY seriously.

Of course, he's had other testing such as QCA's and SATs level testing every year (or is that the same thing? )But there just seems to be so much pressure put on DC because of SATs.

Can anyone actually see me?

Or can I assume that I am being ignored by BeenBeta?

tethersend he only sees and reads what he wants to. Never let the truth interfere with what you want to believe.

Merle, I think it's something to do with legislation, the action taken has to be within 6 weeks of the vote, so Heads can only vote to boycott this years SATs and not next years.

merle "Why couldn't they have voted to boycott next year's SATS, but carried on with those planned to take place in 3 weeks time?"

It's to do with industrial action law - a boycott would then be unlawful because people who voted now may not be members next year, and vice versa.

Sorry, if I haven't read the thread properly, buyt has anyone actually answered the OP?

I think schools need testing, I have mixed feelings about SATS but accept that I don't teach a SATS based subject so I bow to those with better knowledge.

All of my classes complete a piece of formative assessment at least once every half term. My exam classes sit an exam every half term. Every teacher in my school has to do this whether we are super teachers or duffers.

Thanks msz, thought I had cracked the invisibility formula for a second there

Is soupdragon a teacher?

And yes, we assess all the time. I have seen my ds's half-termly maths assessments though, and he is in year 4. So I suspect it is similar in primary. But there is less reporting. And, looking at threads on here, I can see why.

There is a difference between assessment-which we do all the time, tests, which I do twice a year, and national exams- which is what the Yr6 SATS are