Blimey year 6 SATS talk already

[kilmuir]

just back from a curriculem evening and top of list was Sats. No mention of it being an assessment of teaching , but lots on no holidays during sats week and run up to them as they will be doing practice papers.
Feel a bit rebelious and annoyed

Probably because it isn't an assessment of teaching ...

So who does it benefit? Not the children thats for sure.

Really?
Assessment informs teachers what a child knows and what they need to teach for the benefit of the child. The problem is assessmeny has been hijacked by the government

Its for benefit of league table obsessed parents and headteachers

The assessment is false if they are heavily tutored for the exam. They are tested at end of year 6 , before they move to secondary school, so how much will the child benefit from the findings?

No the assessment is for the benefit of the child and teacher and not all schools tutor for the tests.

Assessments in Y6 inform the next teachers what a child knows so they can be supported/challenged

I'm with Kilmuir on this one.
Because SATs were made into such a big thing with both the press (through league tables) and the Gvmnt (through everything being down to % pass rates, and nothing to do with looking at the whole situation or, dare I say, the whole child), then SATs do not give a good picture of a child's level at all. They just give a picture of how well they were able to learn the narrow hoops to jump through for the SATs, and how they cope with taking a pressured test at 10 or 11 yrs old.
Teachers could tell you how a child was doing long before SATs were invented / hijacked, and will be able to give you a much more accurate picture through their own judgement nowadays too, than SATs results will give you.

I feel really dim asking this, as in Wales there doesn't seem to be as much emphasis put on SATS maybe as in England as we don't have league tables. But if SATS test what a child should have learnt in the national curriculum, surely 'teaching to the test' just means that a child has actually learnt everything they need to know? It seems to be like complaining that teachers were teaching phonics so the children would pass the phonics test, isn't that the point they needed to know their phonics?

Exactly! Agree totally,

I think posters say 'teaching to the test' when what they mean is endless drilling, which I do object to.