Why do schools over inflate Sat results at KS1?

[garfield79]

Ds gained level 3's in his Sat's at end of year 2. I have always believed this to be generous. (School recorded them as 3b I believe)
Had informal meeting with year 3 teacher for another matter and mentioned Sat results and teacher admitted they were generous.

:)

Is it an infant school or a primary school that inflated them?

The reason why some infant schools inflate is obvious - that's a measurement of how well they're doing.

The reason why some primary schools inflate is not so obvious - because it will only hurt them in 4 years time when those Y2s become Y6s. So I think the answer to that is 'short term thinking'. The Y2 teacher doesn't care that it'll hurt them in there KS2 results.

And it may not be the Y2 teacher who is inflating the results. Pressure could be being applied to her from the KS1 co-ordinator or the HT.

Basically the KS1 results is a measure of how well a lot of people are doing their job. All of the KS1 teachers, and the HT and others. So they all have a reason to inflate the scores :)

School goes up to year 4.
Thanks Indigo.

School goes up to year 4 - that is why they inflate Y2 results.

They won't feel the pain of inflated Y2 results in Y6 :)

Makes sense of course.

DD2 got inflated SATs at the end of Infants. I've just been to a parents evening at the (separate) junior school, and watched her poor teacher squirm as he tried to explain to me that she wasn't really 3 material in writing. Which I knew anyway. I did take pity on him eventually and told him that I was fully aware that she'd been over-assessed.

So I am guessing this is quite common than in 3 tier system and separate infant/junior school scenarios.

yep :(

This drives me nuts. I work in a junior school with a separate infants school and we have suffered from ionflated infant results for years. It hugely affects our value added score.

We always assess our year 3s at the beginning of the year and their levels are without exception at least a third of a level lower than their KS 1 SATs results. (I really don't know how they get away with it.)

Several of our current year 3s cannot write their names but were reported as 2c

Your HT needs to work much closer with the infants HT :)

We're separate schools, but on the same site, but we have a good relationship.

And this year, finally, the Y2 results aren't inflated.

But it's taken a lot of co-operation by the 2 schools to get there......

Interesting comments ladies.

Makes me feel even prouder of my own DD's who I genuinely believe WERE working at their reported levels in year 2, and at a nursery->year 6 school.

IAmNotInterested - that's what we're saying.

We're saying it's most likely your KS1 results are accurate in a nursery -> year 6 school.