Upcoming SATS and constant testing of children

[cantfindamnnickname]

DS is 11 in year 6 - for the last half of last term and this term and presumably until the SATS the teacher is constantly giving them SATS papers to do, they are literally doing 2 or 3 tests every day and the pressure is immense.

I am not impressed and think its ridiculous - I have raised this issue with the Head and she agrees that its not the way to do it - she has only been there since January however and is making lots of changes to the school so I think she is reluctant to challenge this at the moment.

I do not want DS under this much pressure - is there any guidance from Ofsted about SATS or best practice so that i can go to head and force her to deal with the issue now?

You make children resiliant to set-backs in the five years before they sit Y6 SATS.
Schools build resillance in childhood in multiple ways, often focussing on it periodicaly as a core school value.
By Y6 children should have the resiliance to tackle a new area of learning knowing that mistakes are a normal pathway to learning and that focus, practice and stick-to-itness will ensure they can shine with confidence in tests.

ragged - some children wont be learning anything new and will simply be practicing passing a test.
Most children will have a few gaps in their knowlegde that SATS prep will highlight and give them a chance to remedy prior to the main test.
A few children will have big gaps and will be drilled, pushed shoved over that magic Level 4 mark.

It's not perfect for any child however the alternative of not testing is terrible for all - Wales is a perfect example of falling educational outcomes since the removal of tables and tests.

Yes teachers should be under pressure, at some point we must be accountable, and publicly, for the results we deliver.

Senior schools should be able to rely on the data coming from Primary schools - if they are regularly having to re-test it is most likely because too much Primary data is teacher assessment rather than external assessment.

At my daughters' school the Year 6 children have been starting school at 8am rather than 8.45 - to prepare for the SATs! When I asked the HT if that meant his staff weren't teaching enough/properly during the normal school day he gave me a very dirty look... He didn't answer, though

My son is Y2 and has had SATS papers sent home to do DURING THE HOLIDAYS. He did them dutifully, but I didn't tell him what they were. He thought it was just LOADS of homework.

I work in a primary with Year 6 (currently helping to prepare Y6 for SATS according to the school's regime of doing past papers every day. Not my choice) and my husband is a secondary school English teacher. We both know what an ABSOLUTE joke SATS are. Secondary schools don't trust the results, and primary schools do everything they can within reasonable (and sometimes unreasonable) parameters to get as many children "performing" according to plan.

The current system STINKS, and is letting a lot of children down. Just think what Year 6 could be learning now, instead of past paper, after past paper. They are being taught to the test. It's a joke.

DH and I will very likely "de-school" DS for his final year of primary. That's right, 2 education professionals taking their child OUT OF SCHOOL to escape the SATS insanity.

Ds1 in Yr3. Many parents were commenting the other day, what a terrible year, Yr2 was. And how Yr3, seems like a total breeze, with hardly any homework and no pressure.
Which, is, just very wrong.

Oblomov I agree, how sad. I refuse to believe that I have an unreasonable or unattainable expectation that school and education should mean more than this.

SATS degrade learning, degrade teaching and they degrade education, in it's true form. It's like "factory farming" (cram them in, standardise them) or mass production, aiming to squeeze as many perfectly moulded "sausages" out of the education machine and into taxable workforce.

Pupils do need some practice in sitting formal tests of some kind (though not necessarily SATS)
In Wales schools do not do SATS and those pupils have a rude awakening when they start to do mock GCSEs having never sat any kind of exam in their lives.
Just pointing this out.
I am sure there are ways of testing pupils without giving them undue stress.
Maybe a little and often would be better than too much stress all at once?

Just wondering why pressure on children is seen as a negative?

Surely the better they do in Y6 SATS, the higher group they will be in when they go to senior school.

When those who've been hothoused start to fall behind their academically more able peers because they can pass a test but can't apply it to their ongoing education.

SATs are a complete waste of time.

1. Everyone know that schools now 'teach to the test' i.e. they only teach what is required to get through the SATs and nothing more/nothing less.

2. SATs are a way of assessing schools not kids which is why teachers put pressure on kids to pass. All SATs do is assess is whether schools are proficient at teaching SATs and SATs-like papers. Remember that teacher's pay is now linked to performance, so they don't get pay rises unless their kids pass the SATs.

3. Many secondary schools don't believe the SATS results they get from their feeder primary schools anyway, which is why in my area, they do their own assessments in Y7.

4. If you could see the anguish that many Y5 & Y6 kids go through, the fear of failure, labelling themselves at aged 10 & 11 as failures, you wouldn't say that SATs are a good idea.

For sure we need a way of gauging a child's ability, in order to give them the suport they need for learning, but not to make them feel dumb, small and like a loser.

Schools are supposed to be about all-round education for life, and a love of learning. Aren't they?

I'll get off my soap-box now :)

Just wondering why pressure on children is seen as a negative ?

Surely the better they do in Y6 SATS, the higher group they will be in when they go to senior school.

Personally I'd be pushing like billy-o to get a child out of a senior school bottom set group into at least middle, preferably higher group.

Why would I push my child to get in the top set if he cant work at that level - what would that do to his confidence?

I dont see why any 11 year old needs any stress or pressure - for what purpose?

I want education to be a fun journey and be enthusiastic not stressful and turning him off school. It has taken a long time for him to enjoy going to school and now he is about to be turned off it completely.

For what? For the teachers to be told they are doing a good enough job? Surely as decent teachers they should know what stage exactly each child is at and which ones need extra help to get them to secondary level without putting pressure on them.

DS's teacher is not teaching them anything - they are literally repeating tests after tests and going through where they went wrong.

Going rough test after test and going through were they went wrong is not teaching them nothing. It's teaching them how to pass the test.

I hate to hear about children's experience of school being ruined like that. I agree education should be fun and instill a love of learning and curiousity about the world. I've taught in Y6 for years now and the way I deal with SATs is to try to prepare the children so they are confident and can show their true ability without putting too much pressure on them. It's tough because as a teacher the pressure's massively on you and it's really important you don't pass it on. I'm always amazed at the end of SATs week how many children say they actually enjoyed the tests! And when the results come out it's lovely to see how proud they are when their hardwork pays off. The way I look at it is that at the moment SATs are how we have to assess children at the end of primary school so I just try and make the best of it. Handled well, it means children's first experience of tests is as positive as possible. Sadly, that's not always the case.

I'm not opposed to SATs as such, but the pressure is daft. Even ds got his knickers in a twist about them, and he goes to the floatiest, hippy-dippiest, forest-loving primary in Christendom. It turned out one of his classmates had told them that the marks went on a file and that this file would go with them FOREVER and that if he didn't get 5s he'd never go to university

Thankfully our experience of SATs last year with DS1 was nothing like the OP and hopefully like you describe LizMcB. DS and his year didn't mind them at all. They enjoyed being the 'important' ones for a week. They had very little extra homework at Easter and not that much during the weeks running up to the SATs. They still did things other than the SAT subjects and went on 3 trips in the spring and early summer term. They all did very well without being crammed.

The school has been working very hard on not letting children coast in years 3 and 4 and then having to cram in years 5 and 6 like many less well organised schools do apparently and it seems to be paying off. There were no children freaking out or in tears. They liked it in a low key sort of way.

The upshot of it all was when they went to secondary (most of his class went on to the catchment secondary) very few of them were moved around because what they achieved in their SATs was a genuine reflection of their abilities. DS's CAT results were on a par with his SATs.

If the school takes a sensible approach I don't see the harm in them. We did formal tests when I was in year 6, 35 yrs ago, they aren't anything new. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with SATs just that some schools have the wrong attitude - too many apparently but is that the systems fault or the schools for not approaching them properly?

Tests are just a fact of life, and I'd rather my DS was prepared for them, understood the value of revising, got used to the pressure to perform to his best, before he suddenly had to do GCSEs.

Going over lots of past papers should relieve some of the pressure of SATS, by making them familiar, rather than increasing the pressure.

Agree with LizMcB, good post from her. That's how all children should experieince SATs.

I think teachers are probably stuck between a rock and a hard place. Some of the parents getting upset about SATs now also looked at schools' SATs results before choosing a primary school back in 2005. I'm sure I did. Read the admissions threads; SATs results are a real deal breaker for many.

I can whinge about SATs with the best of them btw

There is far too much testing and pressure in schools.

They start testing in F2, before they've even had chance to learn anything. It all seems very obsessive, especially when you consider that there are people with university degrees working in Mcdonalds.

I'd just like to say, as a teacher (Y2), I am glad to see lots of parents also agree that SATs are a waste of time. Btw they are not just used to inform the teacher, they are added into tables and used as a way of measuring the quality of the school. I guess thats why there is so much pressure (a stupid amount put on us teachers anyway) the trick is to try not to pass the pressure onto the children who don't benefit from it at all!

I agree with practising so that the format of the test is not a shock.

Anything else is a waste of time. They've had 6+ years in school to learn this stuff, if they don't know it by the time the SATs come along, then the school has failed.

DD1 has been doing SATs practice every day since half-term - I realise now that this is a lot better than some schools, especially since it's a maximum of one paper a day (so NOT English writing+reading comprehension+spelling in one day, then both maths papers the next).

She was however sent home with a pile of crap homework, totalling an expected 70 minutes every weekday of the school holidays. Not only that, but it was not for handing in - instead us parents were expected to mark it.

We did none of it. At. All. DD has been back at school for 2 weeks doing more SATs practice and her marks have not changed at all - how amazing, she hasn't forgotten everything she has ever learned over the two-week Easter break, who'd have thunk?

There has got to be a better way than this, our children are the most heavily-tested in Europe and yet so many countries are doing so much better...

I don't mind testing in schools, but not national testing, and not with loads of stress, build up and pre-testing. We were tested in school at 7, 11 and 14 but it was only a school assessment and there was no worry about it beforehand or teaching to the test.

if you sit mid-level stream GCSE maths you are sitting a paper for which you CAN NOT get higher than C no matter how bright you are!.

If you're that bright, you'd be put in for the Higher paper and be able to get an A*