Headteachers have voted to boycott SATS....

[deaddei]

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

I know years ago when it first started a few Head teachers tried to get around SATs by getting the parents to write a letter withdrawing their children. This seemed to die a death pretty quickly so I don't know how legitimate it was. Only people I know who have withdrawn their children were those with SEN.

Officially & if your child were at a state school, gaelicsheep, then no, you wouldn't.

I got my knuckles rapped by the Head for saying publically (& OK, not that seriously) that if KS3 SATs were still in place when my dc reached year 9, then dh would be taking them to Disneyland that week...

...& actually, I wouldn't've gone through with it, because I dislike the whole notion of students 'boycotting' anything the rest of the school has to put up with.

'My mum says I don't have to do SATs'

'My mum says I don't have to wear uniform/switch my phone off/do homework/attend detention'

In theory I suppose the school would have to record it as 'parent authorised absence' if you did decide that your child wasn't going to do the SATs.

The trouble is, it's not the test on the day that's the problem - it's the wasting of much of a year's teaching & learning time.

No, gaelicsheep, you wouldn't be allowed to do that. This comes from the 2010 Assessment and Reporting Arrangements document:

'Headteachers must ensure all eligible and able pupils take the tests.' and later qualifies this as 'All pupils working at level 3 or above must take the tests'.

"'6.7 What if parents, carers or guardians do not agree with the school's decision about whether their child should participate in the tests?
Some parents, carers or guardians may ask a headteacher not to enter their child for the tests. Schools should not agree to this simply because parents, carers or guardians are opposed to assessment or feel that their child would find national curriculum assessments stressful.

Theoretically, there'd be nothing to stop a parent just keeping their child at home for that week, but as ravenK said, this issue goes far beyond just the test week itself.

By RustyBear Sat 17-Apr-10 21:37:09
SATs start on Monday May 10th and the election result won't be known until the Friday before, so I hardly think there will have been time to cancel them....

How long do you think it will take?

By Cadders1 Sat 17-Apr-10 22:12:40
One of the major reasons why it is likely that all SATS will be scrapped is because the Govt have shown over the last 5 years that they are unable to get enough qualified people to mark them accurately, the cost is too high and most schools question the results.

currently around £25million a year!

soapboxqueen - you have encapsulated the debate for me on this thread:

"Thousands upon thousands of teachers are telling this country that SATs do not work but nobody is listening. The government shouts the subject down saying that it's what parents want. I believe that parents want to know how their children are doing in school. Are they on target or not? Do they need extra help? SATs do not achieve this. In any way shape or form."

I am a parent, not a teacher. I do want regular updates on how my child is doing. The problem I have is that in no job have I ever seen employees allowed to be solely in charge of assessing their own work.

Independent assessment is the norm in every job. I accept that SATs marking may be rubbish in some cases, but that is not a reason to cancel them. I say again, make the ,marking easier with multi-choice and make the exams more regular. Surley a short multi-choice standardised test every term that could be added up at the end of each school year but not be a burden and would be truely independent.

There are many exams in the world that use multi-choice. I have done a lot of them in my life. Why can SATs not be run that way and more regularly.

As for teaching to the test. Yes, if we have a National Curriculum, why not teach to the test? If the test covers the material then teach the material and the test will follow on from that just like a Friday spelling test or tables test does.

I accept that teachers want to use ther own assessment tools 'in class' but do not accpet that external independent assessment should be cancelled.

To put it bluntly, I get the strong impression that unions want to stop SATs to stop parents and LEAs using SATs to assess teacer perfomance.

Lets have something better than SATs such as multi-choice 7+ 11+ and 13+ tests that are already widely available. There are good and sincere teachers on this thread arguing against SATs. Fair enough. I hear you. Listen to me as a parent though. I want a regular set of independent tests so I can see how my child is doing. I do not want to rely only on the teacher who might be telling me what I want to hear and that he/she knows best.

"The problem I have is that in no job have I ever seen employees allowed to be solely in charge of assessing their own work."

BeenBeta- have you ever heard of OFSTED? Performance Management?

Oh, sorry, forgot- you don't answer my questions.

Even when the teacher's judgements are already carefully and constantly moderated by the school, LEA and OFSTED?

Where are these maverick teachers who act of their own volition and just tell parents what they want to hear?! It just isn't possible - teachers are scrutinised, measured, moderated, inspected, etc, to within an inch of their lives!

By BeenBeta Sun 18-Apr-10 08:24:59 "Lets have something better than SATs such as multi-choice 7+ 11+ and 13+ tests that are already widely available."

Do you honestly believe multi-choice is a good way of getting accurate assessments of a child's ability?

Multiple choice long writing test-now there's a thought!

Sorry, but I don't want to teach my yr 6's how to tick boxes. I want to teach them how to treat our wonderful language with care and respect, to understand nuance and meaning, to choose words with thought and care, to express emotions and ideas with clarity and conciseness, to understand how to structure their writing for impact and effect, to use words with joy and delight. I am a teacher, after all!

BeenBeta everyone on this thread knows you want to know how your child is doing but we are trying to say that SATs are just the wrong way to do it. Multiple choice questions are not going to solve the issue either since they are even less informative. There aren't small problems with marking there are really major ones. The way the exams are written can be confusing, marking schemes can be down right bizzare and markers may have been drafted in with little experience and too little time to mark properly. Everything about SATs from the way the tests are carried out to the way they are worded is just wrong, wrong, wrong. They only measure a child's ability to take the test. I agree that there needs to be external moderation but external tests for children at these ages is not the way to go about it.

I truely believe that these tests have not been written with children in mind. They should assess what the children know and they really don't.

mrz - yes multi choice is fine as a snap shot of a child's progress at key staging points. The few 11+ test practice papers my DS1 did were multi choice. That told me he had not done a significant amount of algebra (apparently not in the National Curriculum plan his school is following). He had forgotten how to use angles, so needed a refresher lesson. He had forgotten how to convert percentage to decimal fractions because he had forgotten one key concept. His teacher was unaware of all this despite her glowing self assessed reports of his progress in maths. I went to see her and the HM and we got it sorted out. Multi choice has its weaknesses but is good at testing what basic knowledge the child has absorbed.

DS1 also did the 11+ English test. A comprehension, some punctuation and a spelling test all rolled into one simple multi-choice format. He did fine with no major weaknesses. It is his best subject. I know that already. The test also showed that. Why do you think top private and state grammar schools use to assess multi-choice 11+ tests on pupils entering Yr 7. It is possible to make them good tests. About 25% of my A level biology and chemistry exams 30 years ago were done on multi choice. I did SFA (professional exams) using multi choice. They were hard exams but simple to standardise and administer.

I ran my own multi choice 11+ tests on DS1 and gained an insight that the teacher had missed. DS1 has a good very commited and well trained teacher that I am very happy with - but can you see why I want more regular independent tests?

Sounds like a barrel of laughs round your house, BeenBeta.

"Well I personally know 2 of them. They are not maverick teachers teling parents what they want to hear. They are manipulated and pressured by the headteacher to tweak SATS levels (sometimes up and sometimes down) according to what the pupil got last year, how the rest of the cohort has done, what they think the value added score should be and how they think the genuine results will reflect on the school."

Then they are not acting of their own volition, are they? This is a typical example that shows how SAT tests are not the independent yardstick that parents like Beenbeta are convinced of.

Minthumbug I have also known this to happen and have been put under this pressure myself. However, if scores were moderated between schools it would reduce the chances of this happening. Schools are judged entirely on this grades which have very little to do with quality teaching. Although i don't agree with things that go on in some schools I can understand how they get to that point.

Ah, do you mean manipulating teacher assessment data, minthumbug? Presumably these would be the same Heads who post school secretaries on the door to give early warning of spot checks during SATs, or who let children have extra time - or even ask children to 'check' their answer again.

Unscrupulous Heads can manipulate the test system easily - however, manipulating teacher assessment data is harder, since it relies on evidence. The LEA would question it during the moderation process, and Ofsted check carefully to see if assessment data produced matches pupils' work and assessment procedures are tight enough.

BeenBeta - many selective schools, as well as having 11+-style tests (multi-choice), also have a longer writing paper, "an essay" if you like.

The reason for this is that writing cannot be assessed in any other way. The ability to write well is of crucial importance, and is (quite rightly) a major emphasis in many primary schools today.

Multi-choice tests are fine for testing knowledge and also logic/reasoning, but education these days is about so much more than that.

I agree with Nobiggy, I want my children to be educated and not preparing for tests all the time.

tethersend* - yesterday DSs did 2 hours of judo in a stuffy hall with no windows. Today DSs are doing 6 hours at a chess championship in a stuffy hall with no windows . They demanded to go to both. I would rather be doing some gardening or playing some football or cricket with them outside with not an 11+ exam in sight all weekend.

Oh yes its all fun round our house.

It seems that Ed Balls does not have full confidence in teacher assessment and that is one reason why Labour wanted independent SATS tests.

"Mr Balls did say that ministers do not have full confidence in teacher assessment at the moment, so Sats tests will remain for now."
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1229256/Sats-threat-Balls-lets-teacher-assessment-pupils-sit-alongs ide-tests.html

Multiple choice questions are OK for testing maths, and a large part of English testing could be carried out using multiple-choice, as is done in the 11+. Essay writing could be left out of SATS and could carry on being assessed by teachers instead.

y BeenBeta Sun 18-Apr-10 09:38:05
mrz - yes multi choice is fine as a snap shot of a child's progress at key staging points.

BeenBeta my question was do you think they provide an accurate measure of a child's ability?

I know you are fine using google so I suggest you look at the data and research available which suggest multiple choice questions have limited value as assessment tools and in fact often provide inflated and inaccurate levels.
There is also evidence that guessing and luck play a significant part in results from multiple choice type tests.

I'm an experienced Year 6 teacher, as is my year group partner, and if I'm honest we know the SATs upside down and back to front and can TRAIN children to pass them. If a child is operating at level 3 in Maths with the right training (not teaching) they can get a level 4 on the paper through repition of previous questions and a narrow curriculum of test style questions and focusing on the areas where it's easy to pick marks up. In English we can teach them to 'up-level' by editing their work over and over using the same narrow criteria (e.g. insert 4 adjectives, 2 adverbs....). Reading comprehension, training to questions of the type again. Average progress in my class according to testing is more than a whole level between Sept-May.

Is that what anyone wants for their child? Training to a specific test to get a certain level on that test? A decent teacher can train children to the tests. I hate doing so, I feel forced into a corner though teaching like this. I get a class from yr 5 operating at around 80% level 3 or below and because of LEA pressure and league tables we need around 80+% level 4 or above 2 terms later or we'll have the LEA down on us like a ton of bricks.

I try to at least balance this training with a well-rounded curriculum in the afternoons, others either don't/can't afford to. It depresses me that my class are so weak on investigative or experimental work or simply exploring learning for themselves by creating questions. They can take a question, quick answer, that's it. No wonder secondary school teachers despair, there's massive gaps in their skills by year 7.

OK so teachers think SATs are wrong for all sorts of reasons but primarily because they are inaccurate, badly administered and easy to manipulate.

I suggested 11+ style exams with multi choice questions. Not good enough either even though the top state and private schools use them.

A few of you have recognised parents (and Ed Balls) want independently verifiable external assessment of pupil progress.

Well what do teachers suggest? Scrapping SATs may be a good thing - but what do teachers propose be put in their place that parents would be satisfed with as independently verifiable simple measures of progress that does not rely on teacher self assessment or open to manipulation? Teaching unions never make any suggestions.

tethersend - please read the question carefuly and don't just provide the answer you already prepared.