Spag

[Blackcathaireverywhere]

Can anyone tell me about how the 'English' sats level at the end of year six is made up? Is it a combination of writing, reading and spag? And if so, is it third, third, third? I've had a bit of a google and from what I can see last year maybe just included reading and writing and spag was reported as a seperate mark?

My son's high school does set on sats levels and I'm hoping he can scrape in with a level five. He should be fine with a 5 for reading and he scores well on the spag papers but writing.....well that's a different matter and I'm hoping the other two may pull his mark up!

Thank you!

It isn't a combined English level.

Writing is teacher assessed ( so no test during SATs week)
Reading comprehension is tested and reported separately to the SPaG test.

They are reported as reading, writing and English (which does combine) at the moment the info from the DfE is "Results in the new grammar, punctuation and spelling test are likely to be part of the floor standard in 2014."

Thanks for your replies.

The floor standard? What does that mean?

It's how the government judge schools

So how is the English 'grade' calculated?

basically watch this space they are making it up as they go along

Sorry-I was basing my response on what happened last summer. We reported a SPaG level, Reading level and writing (which was TA) level. As to the future...

I wouldn't worry too much about it re setting. Even if your son's school do use SATs for initial setting (this is fairly unusual-at least in my area) I am sure there is plenty of movement in the sets once the children settle in.

basically watch this space they are making it up as they go along

And have been re English scores ever since they came into power. Have never seen such a shambles in over 20 years of teaching.

To make things clearer - last year's scores were a teacher assessment in reading, writing and speaking and listening which all had equal weighting combined to form an English level.

The reading test score and SPAG score were reported separately.

In my area it's normal to use SATs results for setting in Y7 (no movement until Y8)

Ah-they must trust the primaries in your area!

In ours they all do CAT tests in September then initially set based on those scores.

Recent-ish research said that KS2 SATs alone is a better predictor of future attainment than CATs alone, but if a secondary adds CATs information to that KS2 SATs information they get better predictions than using either alone.

Interesting then to hear of a school apparently setting via the worst option, but I imagine the brochure was very glossy and you likely get lots of prettified data to play with.

CATs of course is a relative of IQ testing and I understand the correlation between IQ and GCSE exam-passing isn't so ermm.. solid.

Ours test them again as part of transition day (a taste of what secondary is really like!) and only use SATS to predict GCSE results.