Are your children’s vaccines up to date?

Set a reminder

Please or to access all these features

Primary education

Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

Practice for Year 6 SATS or not?

9 replies

easylife73 · 03/04/2011 11:25

My DS is in Year 6 with SATS after Easter. He's going to a grammar school in September, and qualified for this very, very well, which we're obviously very happy about. He worked hard (not private tutoring, just me and him practising at weekends). He was fairly relaxed and confident in his ability, but after reading various bits on the internet I was not so much so, as whilst he has always been very bright, it just seemed that the 11+ was designed to trip them up and panic them. I should not have worried, as given how well he qualified for a place he probably would have been fine without any preparation beyond explaining how the exam worked. He is very good at maths and non-verbal reasoning, and this showed in the 11+ results. However, whilst his spelling and actual reading ability are very good, his comprehension and writing skills are not. This was identified in year 2 when we moved house and he changed school, and has so far been reflected in his English SATS scores.

My question now is, knowing he is going to a grammar and that he qualified so well, do I push him to improve his English SATS scores? On the one hand I want him to be able to keep up in September, and obviously trying to improve his skills now will help with that. On the other hand, I am a little worried that his high qualifying score will mean that his new teachers will expect too much of him, and that if I leave the SATS issue well alone they be able to see from those scores that he does struggle with this and will adjust their expectations accordingly.

What do you think? My instinct is to lay off the pressure now as it will increase in September anyway, but maybe I'm just being a bit lazy!

OP posts:
Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
Feenie · 03/04/2011 11:32

You would only artificially inflate his scores if you push now, with just 5 weeks to go. What they don't know at Easter, they don't know! Help with next steps so that the learning becomes embedded before next September, but don't try to cram for SATs, it does children a disservice to scrape a level, sometimes.

mrz · 03/04/2011 11:39

I think the only possible reason to practice SATs is so children know what to expect as far as the format is concerned which the school will have done already. Let him relax.

AtYourCervix · 03/04/2011 11:41

don't be so bloody ridiculous.

easylife73 · 03/04/2011 12:13

Feenie & Mrz - That's what I thought really, just wanted reassurance that I'm not letting him down or encouraging him not to try, I supppose.

AtYourService - Which bit am I being ridiculious on exactly?

OP posts:
AtYourCervix · 03/04/2011 12:48

SATS are a pointless, meaningless exercise designed to measure quality of teaching. not to examine your childs ability.

poor little sod has already had to do extra school work for months, leave him alone a bit.

easylife73 · 03/04/2011 12:55

AtYourCervix - I understand that SATS are a measure of the school's performance not my son's, hence the original question. The point was that my gut instinct would be that's it's better for my son's new school to see where he is genuinely at, not an inflated idea of his performance. You obviously don't approve of me having got him to do extra work for his 11+ - however, he was quite happy to do this as all of his friends were expected to get grammar places, and he wanted to go to the same school as them, not to mention a school with a very good reputation. I do not, and will never, push my kids to the point of unhappiness, but I do expect them to do their best and I do see it as my responsibilty as a mother to encourage them to do well. A lot of the other kids in his year had private tuition for 2 years prior to the 11+, something I would never (and obviously did not) do.

OP posts:
LynetteScavo · 03/04/2011 13:01

If he's able to get a place at a grammar school he will walk the sats. I would lay off the pressure while you can. You've put in a load of hard work, and there will be a load of homework in September, so enjoy the rest.

sue52 · 03/04/2011 13:02

In my opinion the secondary will take very little notice of sats, he's passed his 11plus and got into the grammar so I'd take the pressure off for a while.

TalkinPeace2 · 03/04/2011 19:17

DS takes his sats next term.
Hampshire is comp only so none of that grammar school stress
and all the secondaries retest them at the start of year 7 anyway
that and DS hit level 5 during year 5
last marks I was given he was running at over 90% in test papers
which just shows that the papers are a waste of time for the top 25% of kids
so I am making NO EFFORT AT ALL to push him for the sake of a fiddled school league table place.
His true levels will show up at secondary as DDs have

New posts on this thread. Refresh page