So here we are- KS2 SATS Week...

[ampere]

Feeling more nervous than DS2!

He's 'borderline', particularly in Literacy. He'll be so happy if he gets a 4 (as will I!) so off he went just now with me offering my last minute bon mots ('Read carefully! Most of the answers are in the text! If it doesn't make sense, you've not read it properly' etc).

I would - thats really unfair to the children, the papers should be done , put away and forgotten about - there's nothing they can do now. I would be too !

Yes & the ones who have been practising for it for the last 4 years who passed but didn't actually get in due to distance or whatever. Basically I think they didn't want to bother with the extra teaching but knew these kids were well prepared, probably about 10 got into grammars but as I say they have been training for years. I am a bit miffed as I was told that ds was on the g&t list for maths last year & I think he could have managed level 6 comfortably but his current teacher really doesn't like him ... but that is a whole other thread!

This has been a bit of a week.

My DS was actually quite excited about doing SATS, he's been doing a load of work, bless him, and was all ready to go. Actually, he's had a huge confidence boost in the last couple of months .... since I discovered that he wasn't dyslexic as everyone had told us but just needed glasses! (Mass guilt on my part:( )

Anyway, on Sunday lunchtime he went out to the park at the bottom of the road to play football with a friend for half an hour, fell over and ... broke his arm. His writing hand of course, and so badly that he had to have it pinned and wired. We finally came home on Monday afternoon!

So ... today he's actually started Sats from home, with the Head Mistress coming round to act as his "scribe" ... with me having put about as much effort into tidying the house as he has into revision!

So 23 balloons, the school will claim the credit for all the tutoring.....and your DS who could probably do L6 on his own ability doesn't get the chance to show it.

I think that's even worse than my school where they just "decided not to bother with L6"

My dd says she was not given a mirror for the symmetry question (all the others had one). She is a border line 4/5 so every mark matters! What should I do?

DS2 seems to have coasted through his without any problem. He sits the L6 maths next week.

WRT the level 6, apparently you need to be a dead cert for a 5A in order to sit it as, if you don't get that 5a, you don't get the L6 even if you've passed the paper. This came via DS2 so may not be strictly true. It may explain why only some get entered for it though.

I'm head of Year 11 in a comprehensive and the KS2 SATS are what their target grades are based on for GCSE. If they are coached and pressurised to this extent in primary school, no wonder they so often end up with hugely unrealistic GCSE target grades. I've lost count of the number of demoralised kids I've had to try to help, who, realistically, should get 10 B/Cs at GCSE and feel like failures because they're given 10 A* targets and constantly told they're failing because they can't achieve them. The school have no control over the setting of these targets as that's what we're measured on.
We assess them in Y7 when they arrive from primary school and I'd say on average 5% are at or above the level they've achieved in their SATs in primary school; the rest are below, some well below because they've had the summer off and haven't been on the intensive training programme recently. That's not education and it isn't an accurate assessment of their ability. I strongly believe teachers should be pushing and raising aspirations of kids, but not that they should teach them to jump hoops to make the school look good.

choccyp1g yes that probably about sums it up. I just keep thinking only 2 months left then he will be out of that school forever - hooray!! I can't wait for him to leave & neither can he :)

Tired - hello!

If you reassess at the beginning of year 7, why are targets not based on this, rather than SATs?

alizzabee....sorry for your ds but your post has made just burst out laughing on the other bit !!....SATS in housework ...i would never pass !!! Hope he is doing ok though ...must be painful.

Well Tiredalready you'd have a nice surprise if my Ds was coming to your school; assessed as level5a, capable of passing a l6 paper with no teaching or practice(I printed one off the internet, and he finished it with time to spare) ..and I'm sure he's not the only one.

Alizeebee - sounds like a nightmare, hope he's OK.

SoupDragon - Interesting. Would like to know if that's true

choccy - am wondering about that myself

Sorry, Charlie. She should have put her hand up and asked for one if she could see everyone else had one. Mention it to her teacher, I suppose, just in case.

Tiredalreday - But why lay the blame solely at the foot of the primary schools - why can't secondary not set targets based on SATS or Yr7 assessments and leave it until yr9 when the child is slightly more mature and has settled in to secondary school life ?

Why don't secondary schools shoulder some of the blame ?

Bit disappointed for DS2 that today's paper was deemed to be quite hard.

His ideal results scenario would be Maths 5, English 4
However, I am now thinking at best, Maths 4, English 4,
'worst case', Maths 4, English 3

He's achieved the first scenario in test papers over numerous occasions but of course, that's no guarantee it'll all be OK on the day. He's young and immature for his age so result one would be a huge boost for him!

As for 'going through the paper' afterwards, I'd say not ideal, but my DS was trying to remember certain questions to run past me to see if he'd been on the right track or not. I really wouldn't waste a rant about that, tbh. It's over, it's done.

Tired - I'd like to think the vast majority of us know that the SATS results don't necessarily accurately predict GCSE results; however, the reality is, you don't need to spend long on MN to realise how many people, often through no 'fault' of their own, don't know how state education 'works' (the no. of parents who assume the school they can see from their back door will be the school their DC go to, for instance, so only put one name down on the preference form! The number of parents who utterly condemn OFSTED and League Tables- yet use them as a basis for school preference- or avoidance)..... and even so, we, 'the informed' have very strong views on stuff, don't we?!

Whoopy - I bet they're not allowed to. I might be completely wrong but I bet secondaries are 'legally' obligated to predict GCSE scores based on SATS results by the government. They're not allowed to 'wait til a DC matures a bit'.

Just my thoughts. I'm sure experts will be along soon!

God, this thread just confirms all my thoughts on how craply SATs are administered - whatever anyone says the are NOT uniformly administered like formal secondary school exams in all primary schools

and for your DC simbo and charlie. What were the teachers thinking of?

Don't get me wrong about the going through the test thing. They were all put in the envelope as they should be, but she talked through the questions afterwards and asked for a show of hands as to who got each question right and my ds had his head in his hands. If she didn't see his paper (not sure if she would be likely to have done) she probably didn't believe him when he didn't put his hand up.

see, I'm not worried about SATs results predicting GCSES's because I've strong suspicion DS1 will do better at Secondary than at Primary.

I am not sure about that being a dead cert for 5A allows you to sit L6 - perhaps it will vary from school to school.

My understanding that a child must be expected to get a level 5 , whether a,b or c in order to sit a level 6 .

My DS is in the top Maths group and all his group are sitting L6 and I would expect that those L5' vary within that group , don't forget that any L5 means they are working above the expected level anyway.

Perhaps some else could clarify.

simbo

amphere - yes you're probably right about the Government makes them - so perhaps the blame can still lie at the foot of the secondary school for not making it clear that the target setting with SATS is not achievable - all very well just to blame primary.

And what do you do if a child comes form a primary that doesn't sit SATS ? Some schools have opted out now haven't they and they don't do it in Wales I gather .

In secondary, it's about levels of progress from KS2. That's it. That is how we are measured. Schools don't set targets. Our targets are set for us.