Headteachers have voted to boycott SATS....

[deaddei]

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

TFM this is becoming a little like teaching 9 set 4 Friday afternoon on a non school uniform day.

It is a bit twinset.

I suggest we stick a video on & hand out wordsearches .

I had a moment with my dd in Smiths this weekend, she ( like her mother) is ultra competitive and loves a test/exam.

I gave her some money to buy a new book, she chose some SATS practice papers. I asked her why she wanted them and she replied " I need to do well Mummy so I get the right work next year" She is 8!

She bought them and spent an afternoon completing a book of tests while I did an inward frown. Apparantly I was the same.

Now raven are your objectives on the board?

Why do schools use SATS results for setting pupils? Why not use overall ability and performance, as judged by the teacher? Is it another Government rule?

FFS there is a world of difference between university tests/exams and primary school!

Oh yes twinset! 'All/Most/Some' & everything!

gaelicsheep, we use them because we set - well, it's streaming to be realistic - for English, Maths & Science.

Which is utterly unsatisfactory if you ask me - we're forever having kids in top set who are brilliant at Maths but duffers at English or vice versa.

We're forced to this by timetabling constraints - so many KS4 students follow 'collegiate' courses that KS3 have very little flexibility.

Yes, we could use a better measure, given we're forced to set them for all core subjects. NFER tests were OK - covered verbal reasoning, maths & spatial awareness, so largely avoided the problem of a student being intensively coached to misleading SATs results.

But our LA won't fund them anymore.

One of the things we're working on, as a school, is more flexibility in moving students between sets (but then you get students/parents devastated at being 'moved down'...)

Tbh, I liked the system we had a few years ago - mixed-ability in year 7, set by teacher assessment from year 8. It was far responsive to actual progress & attainment.

"You are a teacher and do not like tests and exams. I still do not understand why."

-Please point out where I have said that I do not like tests and exams.

"I am sure you are a commited teacher but would not be happy for you to teach my DSs."

-Well, thanks for that judgement; let's hope none of your DS's teachers disagree with you. eh? FWIW, I'm also glad I don't teach your DSs. Parents' evening would be awfully dull having to explain the same thing over and over to you.

"If you went on strike and cancelled their SATs I would be livid."

-Do you understand that nobody's going on strike? Do you know what a strike is? How much power do you think I have? Do you even know if I am in a union?

I'm sure you'll not bother answering any of those questions either; you are making yourself look a little foolish by not doing so, though.

You MUST listen to what other people are actually saying.

You SHOULD explain the difference between formative and summative assessment.

You COULD evaluate different forms of assessment and make a judgement about the most effective method for the end of each key stage.

Perhaps I should differentiate the questions?

HA / MA / LA ?

wastwinset - you must be very proud of DD. Now if I could just get DS1 and DS2 (especially) to be that commited.

I have been holding back a bit during this debate - but to be honest I think SATs are inadequate. I want all 11 yr olds to take the 11+ exam. If SATs were dropped I would want a much harder 11+ exam put in its place. I have no doubt that the teaching unions would fight that tooth and nail as well.

I know tethersend might fall off her chair at this point but DS1 has been doing 11+ test papers since the start of yr 5 because I wanted to see for myself how far he had progressed. I found that helpful to know in discussing areas of strengths and weakness in his maths with his teacher. The school has agreed to stretch DS2 and some of hs class mates so he/they can achieve a higher standard than that required by the National Curriculum. He will have to take 11+ to get into his next school.

(BeenBeta - are you Chris Woodhead?)

I am reading a very interesting book by Prof Carol Dweck called 'Mindsets'. I was introduced to her work through various conferences, courses and wider reading that I've undertaken in the past year or so. She has some really very interesting -and inspriational- things to say about attitudes to achievement, effort and success.

I suspect that BeenBeta is of a 'closed mindset'.

That's not to say it's necessarily a bad thing; just that such a uniformed and rigid concept of success may well hinder in the future. It almost certainly means that we will get no joy in trying to persuade BeenBeat away from her/his own mindset during this discussion.

Not Chris Woodhead but I really like his ideas. In fact, I would like his company to take over the private school my DSs go to. Introduce some focus, financial discipline and put a bomb under the teachers. Time to stop pussy footing around.

Me and DW are emigrating with DSs to New Zealand (hopefully) next year which has far higher educational standards in the state education system. It is not rocket science. The Govt there is also in the process of facing down the teaching unions.

I do not have a closed mind - I can see what other countries achieve and want the UK to be the same. Excellence through rigorous assessment, streaming for children so they are taught at the appropriate level and raise sandards across the board. Teaching unions stand in the way of that.

Figures.

Well, good luck with that one.

Closed mind does not mean the same as closed mindset, though. You can train yourself or be guided into developing a 'developing' mindset, where you do not accept that certain things and personal traits are predetermined or set in stone, and that success is not just marked in prescriptive tests but in how you approach setbacks, challenges and difficulties, and learn from them.

But in order to do that, you need to be able to accept others' views and listen to and learn from the differences that others have, which I haven't seen much evidence of throughout this thread.

The fact that you're still so keen to 'put a bomb under' (nice analogy) so many of us teachers here would indicate your willingness to disbelieve all that you've heard about the failure of SATs to improve standards, and the testing and assessment that does, regularly go on, measured against national standards.

(and it's "DW and I" btw)

I don't think teaching unions do stand in the way of what you want, I think the government does. The way to achieve what you are after is to have smaller schools, or more teachers with smaller classes.

The comp I taught at did not set for the humanities subjects I taught, and RE at GCSE was also mixed ability. I wanted setting desperately as it is easier to teach sets as opposed to mixed ability.

There is rigorous assessment - in the three humanities subjects I taught at KS3 they did 15 assessments over 3 years. At KS4, they did assessments, and a GCSE question every week which was marked to the standard at which I mark the actual GCSE papers as I am an examiner.

At KS4 the GCSE results are the measure by which we are judged. No matter how much effort I put into KS3 or year 10, it was my residuals that seemed to count for the most, and that could be skewed by a student deciding they couldn't be arsed to turn up for the exam.

How would you put a bomb under the teachers? I did 60 hour weeks and four nights a week after school classes and could not have physically done any more than I did; what more do you want?

BeenBeta, the only way I will fall off my chair is if you answer even one of my questions and engage in the debate. As it is, I'm sitting very comfortably.

If you don't want to debate the issue with me, just say so.

Otherwise, just keep posting the same stream-of-consciousness posts which show your paranoid ignorance of the state education system and indicate that you haven't a clue what you're talking about.

It's a shame, because I had respect for you as a poster in the past, even though our views are different. Thanks to this thread, I've lost that respect; your debating skills are non-existent, and you are too arrogant to admit you've posted on a thread you know nothing about.

How disappointing.

scaryteacher - what you are doing sounds absolutley fine to me. It is what I want. Private teacher led assessmnet plus public exams, setting streaming, smaller classes and so on. In fact, I cannot remember a time when I ever disagreed with a thing you said on education. I apologise for the analogy and withdraw it. I have been careful on this thread to differentiate between 'teachers' and 'teaching unions'.

The teaching unions argue against SATs but do not propose to put anything in their place that is a public exam. That is why I think they are blocking reform. Of course teachers should do their own private assessment as good teaching practice - like you do.

I want a public exam element as well though that parents can look at. The teaching unions do not seem to want that and a minority of poor teachers would hide behind that lack of public scrutiny. I want transparency. Sunlight is a good disinfectant.

scaryteacher - we are both secondary teachers, and so, as I said before, we will always have the public exams.

Would you like to see a formal public exam at the end of KS2 - the SATs or a "harder" replacement?

And beta - what do you mean by harder? Do you want to move away from levelling - or test over a wider range of levels?

A wider range of levels. My experience of with DS1 is that the SATs level 5 is below the standard he needs to enter certain schools. Hence we are assessing him with 11+ papers.

I want to see a replacement for SATs that is more like an annual public exam that allows annual streaming up and down the scale. It would surely help teachers and parents assess where a child was struggling and what the approprate teaching level is for that child. I am not just talkng about bright children here. I am worried about children struggling at the bottom of the class as well as languising at the top.

Don't get me wrong, I do not like SATs but as bad as they are I fear it beng taken away and nothing being put in its place - which is what teaching unions are after.

BeenBeta... can I take that as you sticking your fingers in your ears and ignoring me completely then?

For which year groups?

When do you want the exam to happen?

Teachers know (or should do) where a child is struggling, and the teachers should also know how to differentiate work for that child to support, encourage and then push that child on.
Equally, they should recognise where a bright child is bored, and how to stretch them appropriately. However, a test is not going to tell you this, but teacher assessment will.

I taught a pair of twin boys. Both bright. One an exam animal, one not. The one who was not did worse in his KS2 SATs than his twin, and could not get past that for most of KS3, measuring himself against the label of his SATs level and his brother. I spent 4 years convincing this lad that he was not 'thick' and that he could achieve, and he did. He came to Friday after school GCSE RE lessons and got an A in year 10 for full course, followed by a string of As and As in Year 11. He is now at university and is doing really well. The other twin, the 'bright' one burnt out early and got Bs and Cs and now works for large well known supermarket chain.

The point of this is that SATs label a child at 11, and that is a label they take with them in their heads to secondary. If you purely went by the SATs marks then twin A was on paper brighter than Twin B, but teaching them both, I knew that wasn't the case. I used to tell my year 7s I didn't care what their SATs mark was, it was the level I marked their work at that mattered to me.

When I left junior school at 11 in 1977, I can't recall doing a final exam, but was still put in the A stream for comp.

With teacher assessment it should be checked by other teachers. When we did assessments for RE, we each had to find examplars of a piece that hit the different levels and justify it in a department meeting. When I had a piece for which I couldn't decide a level, then I passed it to my HoD and we discussed it, so there was inbuilt moderation in the system.

Teacher assessment will also give you a better picture because not every child can cope with exams or will have the space/resources/opportunity/parental help to study at home for a series of external tests. By all means do internal tests (I remember Friday morning spelling, definition and tables tests with Mt Sherwin at Juniors very well), but I am not convinced that another layer of external tests will tell you any more than a teacher assessment will at 11.

BeenBeta- surely if your child is needing such intensive training, coaching and assesment to pass the 11+ then he may not have the ability that he needs. I feel sorry for your ds having such a pushy single track parent.