SATS!! Should we feel so stressed?

[sogrownup]

DS is in year 6 and heading for his SATS in May. We have been called in to meet his teacher because he is 'not performing'. In addition, all the parents have been called to a meeting to discuss where the children should be. The children are practicing daily and other subjects have been dropped in order to concentrate on numeracy and literacy for SATS.
We had decided not to get involved with the hysteria but we have been told that DS will be put into his sets at high school as a result of his performance in SATS. Now we feel under pressure to push harder and it feels so wrong. I know that many of the teachers are against this target driven system........
What should we be doing when our DS is just not reaching his full potential and is not engaged? Surely he will develop at his own pace. This pressure is so stressful!!

No, don't place lots of pressure on him. Just make it clear to him that you expect him to try his best but will be proud of him whatever levels he gets.

I'm a teacher (not currently in Yr6 but have been several times) and hate all the pressure, especially when other subjects are sidelined or dropped altogether in the run-up to the tests. Children need time to relax, they need to develop skills other than literacy and numeracy and those that aren't strong in lit and num need the chance to shine in other areas.

The 'not performing' issue I would want to address, not because of the SATs but because in any year group it's a concern. Have you talked to both DS and the teacher about the reasons- is he distracted by others, bored by the work, over-confident? How does he get on with homework? Does he have any interests you could use to help him engage e.g. could he practice his writing skills by writing to a favourite sports star, or practise maths skills by looking at league tables and answering questions? These things may help him to see the relevance of some of his school work, if Year 6 isn't taught well it can be very dry and off-putting.

sogrownup Your teacher sounds horrendous. It was her job teach your son the national curriculum, if the children are not there yet it is the schools fault. It's appalling that more interesting subjects are being dropped to make up for the schools lack of care and it must be mind numbing for your DS.
When your son gets to his new school he will probably be reassessed and not much notice will be taken of sats achieved at primary level. Your son will reach his potential in his own good time and relentless pressure from school to achieve targets will not help.

Thanks pozzled, yes we speak to him at length and regularly. His teachers get quite frustrated by his lack of focus. The ideas you have put forward are great and we are grateful for any advice as we feel we have tried everything. He is just not driven to acieve at this moment in time. I really believe in his ability and reinforce the message daily, but I want him to be a child too.

Thanks Sue52, I have to say his teacher is really very good and I am sure that she is under pressure to achieve results too. I think that children develop at different paces in all areas and this system doesn't allow for that. It's interesting that you say they are retested at high school, that makes me feel much better, thanks!!

How does she know what set he will be placed in? I mean does she know what secondary he will go to - and what their setting policy is?

All secondaries do it differently. So unless she actually knows.....

Some don't set, some don't set till after the kids have been their a while, some do their own testing to decide the sets....

Plus - do you want him to be in the top set? I mean if at the moment he's only 'average' - would the top set even be the right place for him?

If all they are doing at school is Maths and Literacy (shocking) - then what else can you do? 6 hours of English and Maths is going to count for more than anything you can do at home...

Ignore the teacher. She is more worried about her own SATS than about your childs future....

If she's really concerned she could always give him extra 1:1 tuition in her own time

I'm a bit to be honest...
It's January and already they are practicing for the SATS in MAY at the expense of everything else

those results are just to place your school in the league tables.. I'm 100% positive your secondary school will reassess at the beginning of Yr 7.
It's only 1/2 way through the year, surely they can't have covered everything yet...
I'd be disgusted at this.
Actually I'd be making fuss abut this to the head.

I'd be making a fuss to Mr Gove myself.

Who, really, can blame schools for their emphasis on league table results. Every one of us who has 'idly' glanced at a published LT is guilty.

Let's not blame the schools, and as for ...
(Q).. "Your teacher sounds horrendous. It was her job teach your son the national curriculum, if the children are not there yet it is the schools fault."

Are not where yet? Level 5 you mean? Or perhaps she's not being 'horrendous' in suggesting to you your DS isn't working at the level he could be.

At this stage, having already made your secondary admission preferences, you should know whether the secondary school does band according to SATS or whether it does its own tests, like CATS. You can give them a ring and check.

PS I am not a teacher, just a parent who is annoyed at how now we got what we asked for (teacher accountability, achieved via national state testing) we complain to the Head teachers that the teachers focus on the tests!

Thanks all, we have decided to go with our original approach and not get caught up in the madness of these targets. Reading all your replies is helpful and has got me back on track. It is easy (even when you try and think rationally) to go into panic mode and question your parenting skills. I am calm again!! Our children ARE individuals and develop at different paces...this is my new chant!! Most of the teachers are fab and are doing their utmost to help children reach their full potential.

I am also a parent of a Y6 boy going through the same sort of thing. I hate hate hate the SATs with a passion and they represent everything that's wrong about education. I'm also a parent governor and last year asked the headteacher why our school was still doing the KS2 SATS when over 70% of the schools in our LA were boycotting them? Teachers hate them, for the reasons pozzled said earlier. I'm convinced out head is so keen on them purely because of the bl**dy league tables, which we're near the top of.

I have been reliably informed by several deputy heads of secondary schools in our LA that their schools ignore the KS2 sats results and rely on teacher assessment, because a) so many primary schools are boycotting them that they're meaningless as an assessment tool for secondary teachers and b) because some schools cheat and tell the kids the answers! One deputy head told me that they have to discount the results of 40% of their Y7 intake as they come from schools where cheating is a fact of life. This has a knock on effect for their GCSE targets, which these kids don't have a hope in hell of achieving as they're based on duff info, thus dragging down the school's GCSE results and affecting their whole status and funding.

SATs distort the whole Y6 experience, stress kids out (my son was getting very disheartened that he was a 'failure' and only this afternoon one other mum said her son was practically hyperventilating through stress that he was not going to succeed) and stress parents out too.

Another ex-deputy head told me she'd heard that the Govt are set to scrap SATs for KS2 next year. No doubt repacing them with something equally bad!

The only people who benefit from good Sats results long term are the schools. The stressed-out children gain nothing - but can take ages to get over their fear of tests and feeling of being a failure.

AFAIK most secondaries do another load of tests in the first term to decide sets for maths (they often don't set for anything else till much later), and even if your DS ends up at a school where the initial set allocation is done based on Sats results, they are always flexible about moving people around later.

In your position I would encourage your DS to resist the pressure, and don't make him do extra work at home. Then smile politely and nod at the teacher when she tells you how many practice papers he should be doing, and let him go and play football or whatever instead.

Year 6 was a wasted year for my DS as his school also started drilling them for Sats at this stage, and did nothing academic after Sats finished. He was bored to tears and frustrated by the lack of anything new being taught all year.

FWIW, he is on the G&T register at his new selective secondary, and is doing brilliantly at English among other things, but (only) got a 4 in English for his Sats - I think his atrocious handwriting may have had something to do with it. He also only just scraped a 5 in science but got 90% in a yr 8 test last week (top of the class).

IMO Sats don't tell you anything except how well children have been trained to jump through a particular set of hoops - completely worthless and irrelevant to everyone except the compilers of league tables.

Small point: Why don't we all go ballistic and stress out about the 'Secondary school Y7 tests' and the 'fear of tests/being a failure' they could engender? - because there aren't league tables hanging on them! We actually often can only guess at the results of these. AND we, as hands-on, involved parents simply don't have the access to our DC's in-school education that we were allowed in Y6. YET, thing is, some of these 'secondary school tests' can stream (and I mean 'stream', not 'set') our DCs which can well, due to timetabling constraints, 'label' our DCs for much of their secondary career.

Exexpat is right, to an extent, about SATS benefiting schools BUT the DCs who get the level 4 have, after all been trained/educated to that level, and 'good' SATS percentages in a school have to be taken in context. You'd expect good results in a leafy area but marvel at them in a socially-deprived area. Funnily enough you never see all the CATS results of a Y& year, do you?

Are we, as parents, being a bit simplistic and hypocritical?

Y7, not Y&!

Secondary schools seem to be wise to primaries hothousing for SATS results - people say all the time round here that the high schools set children by their SATS, then find out that the schools test the children themselves in year 7.

You could always phone the school your child will be moving on to, if you know, and ask them directly.

Agree with exexpat about year 6 being wasted. I'm hoping my younger child's year 6 teacher, who is new, is enough of a pro to do something more interesting with them after SATS than the older one experienced, but they'll be pretty full-on practising until May.

Seriously if your child goes into the wrong set in 2ndary they move him into the right set. Its a fluid thing thatlooks at the childs abillity.

If all I was doing all day was lit and math my concentration span would go blinking fast to. I would seriously complain about that if that is what they are doing now in January and suggest they take the mark down this year for their SATS if they genuinly feel that they have not got up to abillity then they will need to look at how they teach the children not try to hothouse the kids.

I had a huge argument with the acting head at my dd1's school when she woke up during sats week with 39.9 in temp the head wanted me to dose her up and bring her in I refused she then tried to tell me that she would be placed in the wrong set in the 2ndary if she didnt do the exam (she has 39.9 in temp what part of that do you not understand HELLLLLOOOO???) I refused and informed her that if she was so concerned about how the school was about to cope that they could not cope with my child (whom was a average student) not being there then she perhaps ought to look at how she lead the school rather than try something as shameful as what she just had done to me..

that is 2 years ago I do not regret it and I would do it again. I am telling my current year 6 that she is to do her best but apart from that it is up to her school to give her a good overall education over the years she was in that school not just cram it all in in year 6.. told all of my kids repeatedly that SATS is about how the school is achiving and not about how they are achiving however as in everything else in school I expect them to do their best.

Sorry ranting here but GRRR it makes me so blinking angry when school tries to bribe parents at the point they are deemed most vulnarable (the future of their kids) dd1 has been moved in 2nd dary schol (year 8 now) no less than 5 times to be in the set she is in now.