Does your school do "optional SATS for yr4 and yr5?

[mungogerry]

I have just read the parent newsletter from our head and she states how delighted she is with the year 6's for completing their sats this week, and sends a big well done to the children in years 5 and 4 who also took the optional SATS.

I wondered how many schools do likewise? Is this just to stretch the more able in the years below?

Lots of schools use the optional SATs in Y3-5 as an assessment at the end of the school year to support teacher assessment.

Yes, formal testing is done in all years apart from YR and Y1. The optional SATS in Y5 are also used as banding tests for the local secondary schools.

They call them end of year tests but they are the same as the SATS.

No! We used to, but decided that teacher assessment was far better. We do spelling tests, independent writing activities in quiet (almost test like) conditions and other short maths tests so children get used to tests and how they work i.e. that it is a time when teachers can't help you, that you don't talk to or collaborate with friends, that the tables may be split up. But SATs just show a simple snapshort of that day, we know far more about the children from our continuous assessment and, from a work-loife balance point of view, we have to mark them and they don't tell us anything we don't know already. That marking time could be used more valuably planning other lessons.

DD1's school uses them in conjunction with teacher assessment - DD1 really enjoyed doing them. She also told me that one of her fellow maths stars who didn't do well in the tests because she has a broken leg and is still in pain will have teacher assessment instead. so tehre is flexibility in it.

The difference with the Yr 6 SATS is that Yr 5 didn't do any drilling for them - I wish the system was such that all schools felt able to use the tests in this way - to measure progress and identify areas for improvement, not as a stick they knew they were going to be beaten with if they didn't do well enough in the league tables. Year cohorts vary so much in terms of ability that the SATS are really a very poor measure of how a school is doing.

Think so Will have to ask her. What I do know is that the whole school do some sort of assessment in the same week and the week after but it is played down, and the yr 5 DD has not mentioned the dreaded acrony

Ours do them in every school year in Juniors.

acronym.

Yep - i teach in a high achieving school and the Year 5s are tested using Y6 SATs from previous years.

And at my children's school they also do optional SATs in the hall, even the Y3s!! I have complained about this.

It's all a political hurdle.

Yes, my school does 'optional' SATs in yrs 3,4 and 5, in the hall, with drilling for about half a term beforehand. And the classes will be compared to both the county and the national average and the teacher found wanting.

My dcs did Optional Sats all the way through juniors and I didn't find out until ds was in yr5

All our children do Optional SATs at the beginning and end of each year, but it's a test, not an inquisition! No revision, no preparation, just, "let's see how much we know and what we still need to learn"

Ahhhhhhhhh, I think I may have just made a realisation which I am sure someone will be able to confirm/discount; are SATS papers produced for every year group?

I was assuming that the Y4 and Y5 who were sitting the SATS were the very able pupils who were sitting the year 6 SATS paper alongside the Y6 pupils.

My eldest is only in Y2 so have a lot to learn, I thought you only got two lots of SATS papers, Y2 and Y6.

They're the only statutory ones. Hence the 'optional'.

Thanks Feenie! :-D