Are KS1 SATS optional?

[brachy]

This is too long and complicated to go into so here is the short version..
Are KS1 SATs optional and can I withdraw my child from having to do them?

Many thanks.

Teachers assess their children at the end of Key Stage 1 (year 2) and need to report their childrens levels to the Local Authority+. The tests form part of that assessment. Its not as 'formal' as Year 6

Are the tests being made to appear frightening?

How does the school deal with them? DD's primary school didn't make a big thing of KS1 SATS and the children wre unaware that they were being tested on a national level.

All exams are optional. The rest depends on your definition(s).

School may have already done them! My school does them in Jan I think.

But no, you they're not optional and you can't withdraw your child.

If your child is working below a L2 then she won't do them.

The KS1 SATs mark is however not derived from the test. That is one piece of input the teacher uses to give a child a teacher assessed mark.

learnandsay - it is unusual for you or your child to even know they're sitting the test. So pretty hard to keep them home if you dont' know they're happening.

As children are assessed continually, it'd also be pretty weird to object to this one assessment but not every other assessment that is done over the year.

All KS1 and KS2 SATs are a legal requirement unless your child is unable to access them because they are working at a level below that required ( where levels given will be based on teacher assessment.) However teacher assessment in KS1 is made up only in part of test levels achieved but is more dependent on day to day levels worked at in the class. This is becoming increasingly so in KS2 as well, science and ( nearly) writing being based purely on teacher assessment but in some cases supported by test evidence. Maths and reading levels in KS2 are test based.

Since the children are assessed by teachers throughout their time in Y2 it would be impossible to withdraw them from KS1 SATs. A child could miss the day on which the specific tests were being administered, but in many schools that test would not be announced as a special event, and, as the test only informs the teacher's overall judgment, that judgment could be reached without the test being taken at all.

Even in KS1 children DO have to take the test, but if your child is absent on one day, they can just sit the test on another!

There is no specific day when the tests are done, so not sure how you could withdraw your child. Apart from keeping them home between now and the end of June!

TBH 2 of my DC have done them and neither of them realised they had done them.

DS didn't know he was doing them last year. And he is pretty on the ball tbh

Not being talked about at all by my year 2. Very low key. Not sure when he is doing test papers. Did some 'booklets' early last term [his words].
No home work either. Have friend whose school have been sending year 2s home with test papers for home work and talk of SATs buzzing round the playground.

None of our year 2s realise much and they definitely don't chat about them.

My DD had no idea she did them - she is Year 6 now and didn't believe me when I told her about the Year 2 SATs.

DS1 is a bit more switched on, plus he had an older sister who had done SATs. He did know he was doing them, but only because he read the front of the 'quiz booklet' he was doing. No mention of it from the teacher to the children. He was not stressed by it though, all he could tell me about it was that he only got one of the maths questions wrong.

"of course the kids know they are taking them. Nothing else is talked about for weeks."

If they do then I think the school is going about them in the wrong way. KS1 SATS were very low key at DD's school and rightly so.

"of course the kids know they are taking them. Nothing else is talked about for weeks."

That sounds like a pretty dire school to me!

My yr2 dd knows nothing about them and certainly the class aren't chatting about it. They do "quizzes" weekly anyway so probably will not even notice. There is no stress attached to it at dd's school - probably is for the teachers, but not the children!