How important are year 6 sats

[spicyorange]

Thats it really how important are they? Do you have to let your child take them or can you request that they dont.

DD's old village school pupils come from a pretty good socio economic background. Also, there are no pupils in the school that have English as a second language. It isn't Midsomer, but we have very few people from ethnic minorities where we live. There weren't any SEN children when DD was there as far as I can remember.

We have a PAN of 20, but several times the national average level of SEN, about 20% parental illiteracy and a significant minority from one of the lowest-perfoming ethnic groups nationally ... even though it looks like your typical 'village school' from the outside it really isn't. We would never get 100% Level 4+, but the children make more progress (from their unusually low starting points, with children each year who have virtually no spoken language on arrival and no pre-school education or parental input at all) than in many 'supposedly better' schools with the type of intakes Bunbaker and mrz describe.