So, what do I say to DD1 when she turns around and asks me...

[Iamnotminterested]

"If the High School that I'm going to has all mixed-ability classes until half-term and then does their own assesments, why are year 6 SATs important?".

I know there is a thread about yr 6 SATs at the moment but thought I would put it from a child's perspective. She has a very good point IMO; if the stats are for the LA then why all the hoo-haa about level 6 papers/ booster classes etc when it seems that the secondary will in effect start afresh with a blank canvas in September?

Because they are (supposedly) testing the ability of teachers to get children to jump through hoops teachers.

@ QED. Thought so. So when SAT results are not used for setting in year 7 it really does not make any difference what levels a child gets in year 6?

Because secondary schools do look at them- even if they don't rely on them alone for setting. Because it's a good idea to practice doing tests. Because if she does well it's good for the school. Because the school needs to find out whether the way they teach is the best way for kids to learn. Because it's nice to see a good result for hard work. Because every other kid in the country's doing them so she might as well too.

It's all a bit by the by round here. They don't go to High School til Year 8.

She asked. That's all.

My DS is the opposite.

I keep telling him not to stress, they're not important. But he says if it's a test he wants to do well.

So on one hand he's more stressed than I'd like. On the other hand he's managing his stress by doing extra study - which I'm pleased about. If he reacts to academic stress by doing extra study layer I'll be well happy :)

OP - tell your DD they're not important. But you still expect her to try hard and do her best - just like you do every other day of the year.

You don't however need to make her do extra preparation for them.

Year 6 SATs are important as they show how your dd has progressed in primary school. Information about the SATs results and teacher assessments is passed on to the secondary schools in the Summer term and the secondary school will use these results to help set an initial target for your child for end of Y7 or even end of KS3.
But most schools use other tests e.g. CATs or NFER in addition to SATS because some children may have "underachieved" in Y6 and others may have had lots of coaching so the SATs may have been an overestimate of their abilities.

So that she can demonstrate to the government how clever she is ... no one but her high school will look at internal tests
and despite the commonly held idea that SATs are a test of the school her results will be used by the DfE to set targets for her in KS3 and in GCSEs ...

The one good thing is sometimes it does provide extra money for the kids who don't get level 4 in year 6.

When ds was changing school they had a couple of visits to the new school. The school did their own tests during one of these visits. Ds was in hospital having his appendix out at the time so they set him using his SATs scores. You just never know what's round the corner!

MummyTime - not sure where you heard that about funding. I don't think it's correct.

Each LEA has its own funding formula, but I've never heard of a school getting extra money for kids working below L4.

Indigo my son got funding for support in year 7 because he didn't get his level 4 in English. No one mentioned it before SATs, and I don't know if it still happens.

Wow! Very interesting.

Dont know about extra funding but we were told Dd2 would be put into smaller groups if she got level 3's which i thought would have benefitted her.

She ended up getting 4's though so just floundered around in the lower middle sets for 2 years.

They do the predicted GCSE grades from the sats yr 6and cats yr 7 round here.

Because you might be bursting to go to the loo in your numeracy CAT and get a duff mark. Had your primary pushed your maths SATs mark higher this wouldn't have mattered as much.
Unfortunately DD1 got stuck in set 3 for a year because of this. She is at the top of set two now and always should have been.

Kids now have to make 3 levels of progress at secondary based on their SATs scores at the end of KS2. So all subject predictions, including languages (which generally don't start till year 7) and PE (which is completely unrelated) are based on how well they did in English and Maths when they were 11. And then teachers have to justify why the little dears didn't achieve their predictions!