Year 6 SATs

[MrsSnape]

I know the year 2 sats arnt really important but what about the year 6 ones? do they matter to the child at all? someone told me they determine what class they're in at secondry school.

My son is in year 4 at the moment but he's a bright lad and I'm thinking of "coaching" him with the year 6 sats workbooks now. He does enjoy them in small doses.

am I being cruel and OTT?

Yes, they do use Yr6 results to determine what class they are in, in secondary school. Personally, I wouldn't coach though. Wouldn't bother coaching though. If he gets into a particlar class purely because of coaching, then he won't cope. Let him be a child having fun for as long as possible I say!

Year 6 sats aren't important, either, for the child. They are very important for the primary school because of the league tables.
Our secondary school do their own tests in year 7 with a view to setting. The secondary school may take some notice of the ks2 results but they don't seem to trust them too much mainly because of the cramming and coaching that is done in y6 which can sometimes skew the results.

We also do our own tests in Year 7.

We do look at the KS2 SATs results but they are often at odd with the child we see in front of us.

In the past I taught a child who had a 5.4 in his science sats. This would have put him at the top end of the scale. In his fist test with us he scored 3.5, an accurate assessment of his ability. He couldn't explain why day and night happen, for example, or how lions and prey differ from each other, but was a 5.4! He had been coached for the test, I'm quite sure. Either that, or there was a huge cock up in the marking of his paper.