"Moreover the creation of level 6 SATs papers, a harder test designed to stretch the most able, has led to a flurry of competition. The numbers entered have doubled in a few years, with parents begging schools to include their kids, even if this means extra lessons, pressure and after-school tutoring. They boast about their 'gifted and talented' offspring on Twitter and Mumsnet. All for a test which doesn't matter at all." - Janice Turner, Times today.
I've enjoyed some of Janice's articles and the overall direction was OK so I'll likely forgive her, but unlike her DC my DD wasn't headed to a private school and L6 was a blessing because it gave her something to enthusiastically engage with in those core subject lessons after a bit of a new-stuff drought.
At Y7 DD's comp the KS2 SATs results were then used to set for maths from day one and create flight paths i.e. predicted outcomes/targets. I see the latter as a kind of minimum guarantee for a high ability child in a state system that is increasingly difficult to trust because it's now so concerned with getting low ability children to floor-levels and closing dubious gaps as opposed to credible ones. Some of this even extends to disadvantaged children now with a quite weighty lobby lined up behind the idea of redistributing half of the pupil premium from the high ability disadvantaged and adding it to the amount given to the low ability disadvantaged.
There clearly was some of that ickiness, but that's not a reason to dismiss the whole and I think it's a pity L6 is now officially history. What happens with the pace being taken off the menu in favour of depth in primary will be interesting: I can't see much room for depth at that stage of education so suspect it will often be repetition unless you're lucky with school/teacher.
PS: "most able" has essentially been defined as the top 50% now so it's largely useless for anything else.