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 ❤️ ❤️

A-HA!!!! That's probably what my husband is thinking about. Thank you for clearing that out ☺️

A-HA!!!! That's probably what my husband is thinking about. Thank you for clearing that out ☺️

Don’t forget private schools don’t sit SATs so eg any privately educated prep school pupil who goes back into state ed at secondary goes back in without SATs. So if they do go to secondary school after HE they won’t be alone in not having SATS!

Oh! That's interesting. Thank you for giving that perspective.
Personally I would be perfectly fine with them not doing exams. They are not done at this age where I come from. 🤷🏻‍♀️ only tests in class with the teacher. My husband will be more challenging to convince 😅😅he is well engrained in the school system..... and of course believes these tests to be super important. We'll see how that goes

You might want to read this OP - about private schools not bothering with SATS - only 20% of private schools do SATS apparently!

You can order old papers on Amazon to look at or even use as a mock.

I just wanted to say how grateful I am for all your answers ❤️ you have gone above and beyond, honestly, and you made me feel so much more confident about this issue ☺️☺️☺️

Who told you that?
You can print old out SATs papers and do that at home for fun/interest, but a child who isn't a pupil at a school can't officially sit an exam that tests the school. What school would the results be attached to?
It's not like GCSEs which are a qualification for the child and can be sat as a private candidate.

SATS and some other screening things that interact with them.

Done at the end of each Key stage (roughly end of infants, junior and first half of secondary).

Assess all pupils in that year group that year in state schools, on the same exam papers, same time. One single system for whole of England. No choice on exam board.

If miss them, might get left, might get done as catch up. They're more ‘do the stuff’ type exams than repeat stuff from wrote, so catch up has lower risk of someone benefitting from knowing the questions than does in other exams.

Used to assess school performance. School doing what it should, all pupils should both achieve the target level for their year group, and have increased by the relevant number of levels since their last standard assessment.

Very little use for the pupil other than:

1. Getting exam practise in before doing gcse type exams where the results do matter to them individually.
2. Flagging to the school whether Theyre at / above / below Whats expected. Although the school should be able to work that out through the rest of their teaching time with the pupil. Occasionally helpful to flag something that doesn’t show up day to day but does in exams. Eg. Dyslexia type issues in brighter kids, who appear bright day to day but SAT doesn’t reflect that.

Grammer school entrance. 11+. Usually specific to the school or council area. You do the one for the school youre wanting to apply for. Use to child - whether or not you get offered a place at that school. More verbal and non verbal reasoning focussed. Typically not something that is taught in schools. No reason to do if not wanting to go to a grammar school at normal entry age. Admission part way through the school will go through a different process so nothing to bank for future contingency.

sats and 11+. No reason to do as home ed student unless at school or wanting to go to grammer school.

GCSEs. More like a qualification. Generally a choice of exam board. Schools and exam centres generally choose which board and syllabus they want to use for each subject. Syllabus varies between exam board so much much better to choose which one before start preparing for the exams and studying the material. Possible to get through life without doing, but much tricker. Hence good reason for home ed pupils to do these exams even when no reason to do the earlier ones. Exam technique is a skill that benefits from practise, so also sensible to plan home ed in a way that if going to ultimately take GCSEs and / or a levels that the first exam conditions type activity isn’t an exam for something important.

SATs are a way of the government assessing the school, they aren't qualifications for the child.

School children do SATS in Year 2 and in Year 6, and the school gets judged on how much improvement the whole year group shows between the two - which is why schools are often very very low-key and do no prep around them in Year 2 (to the point that some people don't even realise that they happened) and then abandon all other academic and pastoral priorities and do a lot of pressurised cramming and drilling in Year 6.
(If your school said they went very softly in Year 2 'for welfare' you can judge if that was true or not by seeing if they are also chilled in Year 6 'for welfare' or suddenly decide that those ones are very serious business!)

Some secondary schools might look at SAT results to give them a quick initial overview of ability when considering making up new mixed ability classes or who might be likely to need different streams or GCSE predictions, but they don't rely on SATS because a) they are quite biased depending on the approach of the primary school and the parents in that school (tutoring or not!) and b) some pupils don't take them anyway. All secondaries will carry out their own tests of the pupils regularly in Year 7 to sort them by ability for anything that needs doing.

Home ed children don't do SATS because they aren't part of a school that is being assessed. If you wanted to get some kind of certificate at this age to benchmark them against the expected level nationally you could enter your child for Functional Skills Entry Level 3 or Level 1 in Maths and English, or do something like a Bronze CREST Award in Science - but there is no need and those certificates won't mean much by the time they get to GCSE/A level and are applying for their next steps.

SATS are different from the 11+ (which is sat earlier in primary school to allow academically-selective grammar schools to cream off the highest-scoring children and not even available to large parts of the country as they don't have grammar schools) and from GCSES (which are sat in a group of 8-10 subjects at age16 in school and are qualifications which then open doors to further study or employment - home edders can sit GCSEs in the same way or spread them out by starting younger, choose from a wider variety of subjects etc etc. Some home edders decide not to do any GCSES at all, but nearly all do Maths and English Language and most do at least 5, as college courses tend to want 5 GCSES at Grade 4/C or above).

It's probably not relevant but many secondary schools do use Sats results to help set pupils in yr 7 and as an input to their future predicted gcse grades, which are important as secondaries track progress and won't be much worried by pupils making average progress, only those who fall back at secondary. If you have a DC who didn't perform well in Sats, secondary's may not push them / expect much from them.