How much Y6 SATS preparation?

[Hathor]

How much sats preparation are your Y6 children being asked by school to do in and out of school? Trying to get a picture of what is usual.

Are the teaching unions boycotting sats again this year, or is that a lost cause?

And all that in one sentence!!!!

My sentence btw Feenie, not yours!

I don't know the answer either. The local secondary school (now an academy) streams according to sats results and many many of our old school children ended up in lower ability groups than the children themselves believed they should be in and many of them had a torrid time (poor, poor children.) Using teacher assessment instead of sats results is fraught with difficulty too for the very same reasons. As a parent not in education you wouldn't really believe it to be too difficult a thing to achieve but it's truly a minfield isn't it?

Ds's school will be running Easter holiday Booster classes in addition to Mock SATs which are running all this week and after school boosters sessions in Literacy, Maths and Science running.

Ds has also received 10 pieces of literacy homework with a minimum work time of 30 minutes per piece. As well as a SAT's spellings and a pamphlet with terms the children should know in each subject.

So do I win the school that has gone completely over the top trophy?

dds school is brilliant. They did do practise sats recently, but its a format that they are used to as they do them each year anyway. It just seems to be part of what they do. Other than that it seems to be business as usual. Wasnt even mentioned at the beginning of year parents meeting. Homework hasnt changed. It is a school where results are consistently very high.

dd doesnt mention the sats at all. I told her once not to worry at all - its just a measure of how well the school has done its job.

In contrast, one of her friends goes to another local school, also with very good results each year and is so stressed about it. They seem to take it really seriously and she constantly talks about her mock sats as though they were really important.

OMG Treas - how do you feel about it all? Your school has to be in for a prize of some sort or another! My dd gets very wound up and despite my telling her not to worry she still wants to do her best (this must be a girl thing, ds couldn't give a monkeys!)and is still getting unreasonably stressed. Again this very day she came out of school saying she needed a personal tutor. She doesn't NEED one imo. Personally (and quietly) I think her teacher may be thinking if she (the teacher) fails to do as well as she did last year, parents may take that as a reflection re her quality of teaching. I just think it's far too much.

EmEyeHi - when I received a letter in the post from the school back in January explaining everything they had in place 'so the children are not over prepared at home' I was steaming.

Ds won't be 11 until May and I think it is unfair pressure on all the Yr6 children. Admittedly Ds will benefit from seeing a practice paper as he needs to learn exam etiquette - he tends to have his own unique approach to answering the questions which although not incorrect might not be what the marking scheme expects.

If ds's school approach was like mrz's I'd be far happier

Agree entirely

"The local secondary school (now an academy) streams according to sats results"

Are you sure MIHi? Or do they use SAT results in conjunction with the reports and CAT tests? I'd be amazed if your local high school used only SATs; how would they place children coming in from places that don't do the KS2 SATs?

ragged - I've been for an informal chat at the school and was given the impression that they used SAT results to stream. They also added that it was all a bit of a nightmare re the last intake as so many of the schools boycotted SATs so they had had to rely on teacher assessments, which kind of confirmed what I thought they were saying iyswim! That's my interpretation as a lay person but I very much stand to be corrected. I'm not in education myself (but have been on incredibly steep learning curve over the past 18 months!) So, no I can't be certain and would be heartily comforted if the use of SATs alone was not normal practice - am here to be enlightened. DD just crumbles at the mention of the word SAT so for her it would be definitely a good thing to use a combination.

"how would they place children coming in from places that don't do the KS2 SATs?"

There would not be many children who come under this category, if any at all.

Some schools do this - a local high school near me sets for Maths in Y7 from SATs.

Our local schools come out and conduct their own tests in the summer term

Interesting. None of ours do!

Most of our children move to the nearest school and their transition teachers comes in to work with the children one day a week for the final half term. I was quite surprised to see her using the Salford Reading Test among other things

Our Head is obsessed with using Salford.
Ours go to quite a few local schools, but most of them have good transition.

Sounds great for the children mrz. At least they enter secondary school recognising some of their potential teachers. The teacher I saw at our local secondary school did tell me that once places were allocated a couple of the staff went to each relevant primary to chat with the teachers so any potential issues would be flagged up, all of which would smooth transition. Working with the children is great though, I think.

Just googled 'what is Salford reading test' and smiled to myself as third on the list was your good self mrz describing excellently from a 2010 thread .

The transition teachers will stay with them for all of Y7 while they settle in.

Wow

My dds school is offering SATs booster classes 2 days a week before school (starting at 8.15am) they are also regularly practising past papers. We think this is rather over the top and would rather do past papers at home. If anyone can recommend suitable resources please do so.