Explain year 6 sats like I'm a toddler please

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Hi!
Exagerating 😅😅 but basically I didn't grow up in the UK or with the UK system. So this whole mess with sats and grammar schools and what not is a mess to me.
Can you please help me?

• are year 6 sats the same exam for everyone in every school? Does everyone up and down the country have the exam at the same time? What if they can't?
• do different bodies mark exams in different ways? (My husband seems to think so)
• is it just english and maths? Or does it include other subjects?
• how is it graded? Up to what?
• what are the consequences of good grades vs bad grades?
• any tips for it?

Of course this excludes homeschooling questions..... feel free to add extra information 😁😁

On a more serious note, you don't understand the HUGE help you'll be if you decide to take some of your time to answer this thread ❤️ ❤️

Its all state schools. English and maths, over 4 days in May. (Several different papers). No exam boards, its the same for everyone.

In extreme circumstances they can be sat another day, but its very limited.

It creates data for the schools, it doesn't effect the pupils directly.

Grammar schools are completely separate to SATs... thats the 11+, only on certain areas, and at the beginning of Yr6

I've just asked my year 6! She says SATs are done in maths reasoning 1&2, arithmetic, reading, grammar & punctuation. They start on 11th May. My reading is that the results go up to the secondary school with them, but I understand that secondary schools sometimes take them with a pinch of salt and may do their own assessments. The other use is to assess the primary schools performance. All kids do SATs. If they need to then the school will make special provisions. I expect there are some exceptions in some circumstances.

You mention grammar. To get into a grammar school kids do an 11+ exam. This is entirely separate to SATs. The exam was on something like 17 September this year.

Sats are done by state pupils in England. Don't know about Wales. Scotland has its own system.
They all sit the same papers.
They are marked and tgen given a soaked score of 80-120 with 100 being the benchmark and I think ~104 as average.
They aren't used as criteria for entry to secondary schools. Grammars have their own tests.
Target gcse grades are generated from Sats which in a decent school shouldn't impact much, though may trigger who gets interventions if falling behind targets.

Sorry this is on the wrong board, you need to move this to education. If however you are home educating SATS are not obligatory (there are no legally required exams, in terms of basic schooling, in the UK) and are purely done for the schools. Home educators do not do SATS they would be a complete waste of time. If you wish your child to go to a grammar school then you would be looking at taking the 11+. Again not relevant to home educators.

The SATS are the same nationally. They all sit them at the same time. If a child is off there is a time frame in which they can take it. I can’t remember exactly what. However , they’ll be isolated from their classmates until they take all the papers.
They sit one reading comprehension paper, one SPAG (spelling, punctuation and grammar) , one spelling paper and 3 maths papers (one arithmetic and two reasoning)

There’s a marking scheme and everyone gets marked the same. Again, if i remember correctly, it’s done by computer rather than people.

Scores are scaled scores. You can find some guidance on the gov website for this. The scores are below age related, at age related and greater depth (normally 110 and above).

No real consequences. It’s just a way for the government to measure progress and judge schools. It does influence what they’re expected to get in GCSES , but it’s not that big of a deal. Most schools will use their own tests/assessments to put kids into sets and determine predicted grades anyway.

You can look at (or do) previous papers as they are on .gov

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-curriculum-assessments-past-test-materials

Greater depth (110 or above) is roughly the top 5% of pupils.

They're primarily a test of schools and of no benefit to children, so irrelevant to home education.

Hi everyone

Thank you SO MUCH for all the replies ❤️ very helpful!

Number one, sorry if I confused people with the grammar school thing. My poor husband has explained how schools work in the UK about 3 times and I still struggle to get it. It's so weird! I just mentioned because it's another thing I don't understand. No need to go into details but thank you for the replies nonetheless.

Number two, about the homeschooling. First of all I didn't really want dismissive answers like ask the school or they'll sort out at the school. There is no school to ask 🤷🏻‍♀️ Also, my personal philosophy with HS is that things can change and my kids may need to go back into school. Accident, cancer, problems..... wtv! So I do think it may be valuable for my kids to sit the exam just in case. It can also give me an idea of how they fare compared to others.

You have all been such a great help ☺️

Unfortunately I don't think home educated pupils can sit it, as its assessing the school rather than them. But you should be able to get hold of past papers and mark schemes.

If your kid is HE they are of no consequence whatsoever. They are a measure of the school more than the child

I don’t think it’s even possible for a child not enrolled at a school to sit

Not quite right . Nationally, 33% achieved Greater depth in reading, 26% in maths, 30% in grammar and 13% in writing last summer.

They differ quite a lot from gcse’s which are set by various different exam boards and it’s definitely possible to sit if not attached to a school.

They have no bearing on your child’s ability if they go back into school. It makes no difference. They are not like GCSE’s there is no external provision for children not in a school setting.
if you want to compare them to others then you can buy the study books from Amazon and get them to do test papers, but honestly they are not a thing that will be applied to your children if they go back into school.

Unless they have been heavily tutored for the sats it’s better they don’t do them.

If your child is home educated then they can't sit SATs.

Because schools are assessed in part based on how well their pupils perform on the SATs, some schools put very heavy pressure on children to achieve, and it can feel like endless mind-numbing drill and stress for children at those schools throughout Year 6, with less genuine learning taking place than in other years.

For this reason, we see a small number of families at our home ed groups who are home educating ONLY for that one year, in order to avoid that miserable experience. Then they enter high school along with their peers the following year.

Not all schools are that bad.

As others have said, there is a separate test for entry to grammar school. First find out whether you are in an area which still has grammar schools. They don't exist everywhere.

If so then you could consider whether your local grammar school would be a good fit for your children and they would be likely to get in. If so, then look at entering them for the test. I understand some parents are so desperate to get their kids in that they have them tutored for it beforehand, but of course if it's going to be that hard for them to pass then probably they would struggle at the grammar school. So that might not be the best plan. Still, they would feel more comfortable if they've sat a practice test. My poor husband recalls sitting his test over 50 years ago and being instructed, "Now take out your protractor..." He was from a school which didn't usually encourage kids to sit the test. So nobody had told him to bring any equipment and he didn't even know what a protractor was.

But if you aren't in a grammar school area or it wouldn't be right for your kids anyhow, then you can forget them. In that case, there's no test you need to be thinking about which would benefit your home educated children, until GCSEs in their teens.

I am a primary teacher.
SATs are designed so that the government can flog primary schools if their pupils don't do well enough. Poor SATs results will get the school downgraded by OFSTED/possibly taken over by an academy chain/headteacher may lose job.

Because the results are so important to schools, a lot of pressure is put on Y6 children to do well.

Technically the results are used to predict their GCSE grades five years later, but many secondary schools don't trust SATs results (I.e. suspect some primaries of inflating results) so most secondary schools do their own assessments when children arrive.
SATs tests are very formally administered- papers have to be kept under lock and key until the time the test starts. There are strict rules about what teachers can and can't say during a test (I.e. you can read a child the words of a maths problem but not hint how to solve it). Despite this, there are many schools where teachers do give hints such as looking at a child's answer and shaking head/pulling a face/pointedly reminding children to CHECK their answers.
Every year people are sent to visit chosen schools and make sure we are administering the tests correctly.
When one paper is finished, two adults have to witness the completed papers being packed up and locked away to be picked up by a courier who arrives the same day to take papers to be externally marked. One adult is not supposed to be left alone with completed papers in case they change children's answers. I once worked at a school which had been accused of cheating on SATs papers and the head and Y6 teacher were called to DFE headquarters in London and threatened with having results voided (they weren't in the end).
Also there is a known phenomenon of papers being harder some years and easier others - usually depending on whether the government wants the narrative to be "thanks to us this year's results have improved" or "this year's results are awful, so we're going to force a new initiative on schools."
It's all very stressful for both staff and children.

Since you are thinking about "just in case" scenarios, here's another point you may not be aware of. If you might want your children to go to secondary school, it would be sensible to apply for a place the previous year. You can always turn it down later if you don't want it.

If you haven't applied for a place, you may lose out on getting them into the school you prefer. Getting them into your favourite school isn't guaranteed anyway, but there is a better chance if you apply before the deadline.

When the time comes, you might like to ask on one of the other Mumsnet boards about how many you should apply for how to choose them, and which order to put them in. It seems that people sometimes get it wrong.

These scores also determine their A Level predicted grades!!!!!!

If your children are home educated, then don't give them another thought. Your children can't take SATs unless they are in school. Most schools use benchmarking tests in year 7 anyway, called CATs, to set students. DD3 didn't get any SATs because she was part of the year 6 Covid cohort. They set based on teacher recommendation and CATs.

DD2 was coached to get greater depth in English by her teachers. She couldn't grasp the text at all, as she has ASD and it affects her understanding of situations she hasn't experienced. They taught her key words and responses. So, for example, if you see the word 'jumper' then write that it was cold. She got 111 in the SATs but didn't have a clue when it came to GCSE language/literature content.

🤔 I was told they can sit it. Anyways my kids don't need it this year so I'll look into it. Thanks