Can someone please explain SATS (KS1) to a forriner?

[AnnieLobeseder]

DD1 is in yr2, apparently SATS are happening this week at her school. DH and I are not from the UK and don't really know what SATS are about. Are they to assess the general standard of the school, or is it a specific assessment of the children? Will her results be part of a long-term educational record? What are they actually for? We never sat any kind of national exam until our final year of high school at 18 - any and all exams prior to that were set by the school.

She came home yesterday with a note that she has been selected for an extension paper in maths. What's that? Is that good news or bad?

I wish the school would realise that not every parent came through the UK education system and offer a little more explanation about these things!!

Sorry for all the questions and thanks for the help....

At the end of Y2 you will get a letter saying what level your child is working at in maths, reading, writing, speaking and science.

Those levels will form part of her long term educational record, but are pretty much only important till the end of KS2. (and the only reason they are important is so that everyone can see whether or not she's made adequate progress in KS2)

The SATs tests you are referring to are a small part of how her KS1 level is determined. They are one of many things the teacher takes into consideration when assigning her her level.

The levels are pretty coarse grained. It's just really a sanity check that your child is making adequate progress at school.

It is only if your child gets a low level ( 1 or W ) that you need to care about them - and if that was the case you should already be aware, and already be concerned.....

The tests are an assessment of the individual child, although the results of the class as a whole will be used to assess the achievement of the school and the progress children and the class make over the next 4 years in the juniors. In year 2, teacher assessment is also included in the final mark given for achievement - so an odd result in the SATS test will be tempered by the teacher's experience of your child. KS1 schools are moderated every few years to ensure that teacher assessment is accurate. I should imagine the maths "extension paper" is for level 3 which is a very good level of achievement in KS1. However, if they are putting her in for both tests, then she may be borderline, as it's more common these days to only give the children 1 test.

Hi AnnieLobeseder

Yes, schools here aren't always very good at realising that things they deal with year in and year out may be new to parents (foreign or not).

Information about the National Curriculum Key Stage Tests (Standard Achievement Tests or SATs) here: www.direct.gov.uk/en/Parents/Schoolslearninganddevelopment/ExamsTestsAndTheCurriculum/DG_10013041

The Mumsnet Learning pages have more about how children are assessed against 'National Curriculum Levels' here: www.mumsnet.com/learning/assessment/national-curriculum-levels - Mumsnet Learning pages (on horizontal menu bar select Education and then select Learning) has lots of information about primary education there and is worth having a look at as and when things crop up.

There are more general parent info pages about primary education here: www.bbc.co.uk/schools/parents/national_curriculum/

I agree with those that have posted above - this is a required test of where children in Y2 are at to ensure for the government (and by extension the tax payers) that adequate education is taking place and to start tracking progress of children through the system. The scores will be reported to you - and the target score is 2b (normal attainment for Y2 students) - lower than this is below expected attainment and higher scores than this (2a or 3+) are above expected attainment.

HTH

Don't think you are disadvantaged by not having come through the system. SATs are new since my time, and A levels have changed too. Most other parents except those who live on mumsnet are probably just as unaware.

Thanks everyone. I'm not worried about dd's progress at all, except for her awful handwriting, and we're working on that. So I won't spare much stress on these sats. She's only 6, for goodness sake!