New Welsh Primary School Exam Results - did the distributions work?

[parasaurolophus]

This was the first year they gave these exams, and today we got the boys standardised scores comparing them to all Welsh children.

Did these exams work out? My children had scores that were considered "unreliable". Is this the case for most kids?

Don't know how DS did yet. Can I ask who considered them ureliable? The school (As in they didn't compare to teacher assessment) or WAG?

WAG. I think the tests didn't discriminate very well. The form the results come on is low in information, and I guess there was always a chance that these first round of tests (so hastily conceived and prepared) wouldn't quite work out. It doesn't look like a normal distribution.

I don't really care. I don't like the idea of telling 7-year-olds how they compare to the national average. They are too little for it to be useful. Can test scores at age 7 predict anything?

We haven't had dds yet either (yr 6).

We got given only scores out of, I think 35 for maths and 37 for literacy, with no additional or comparative information at all. My DC are y4 and y6.

interesting, thanks.
I certainly don't think the children should know how they compare to national average at age 7 or 11. I don't see really understand how it is even particularly useful for parents either (other than possibly those who want to brag their child is top 1%, or possibly if a child has SEN which a school refuses to support then this would give more ammo that they had to). I'm only interested as I want to know if DSs school given SATS scores are fairly accurate (although I think they have been checked over by the LA so should be).

I know DSs 'raw' score for maths, well I did, he told me ages ago, can't remember now, he was just pleased as he did well in his class. They didn't get told the literacy one.

I guess they might be helpful in making decisions at secondary eg welsh medium or english medium. Say dd is given a teacher assessment of curriculum level 4 reading in Welsh, level 5 in English - well is that a high 4 and a low 5, ie not much difference, or vice versa? You would imagine it would be easy to get that information out of school, but certainly in past years getting anything out of dd's primary was like getting blood out of a stone. So for that it will be helpful to see her results in the two languages to compare (though a bit late for her now as decisions all made!)

that's true, DSs Welsh is so poor I didn't even consider moving him to Welsh medium secondary (Reflected in his Welsh SATS result this year), although his younger brothers love Welsh.

Personally i was thrilled with my daughters results when I received them today, she was placed in the 'considerably above average' category for numeracy and literacy!

However it does say on the sheets provided that these results will be used to plot progress in future years, I believe the thinking is that children who are struggling will in theory be picked up more quickly for intervention, but now that Leighton Andrews is out of office are we going to be subjected to a whole new system next year?