Would you tell your KS1 child that Sats are coming up?

[MotleyCroup]

Had a letter from ds school explaining that Sats will be coming up (with date w/c).

Letter explained that the children had been doing various 'quizzes' which I presume are old Sats papers, to get them used to the test.

Would you explain to your child that Sats are coming up? Or would you just let them carry on (the wk of the Sats) without adding to their pressure and not tell them they'll be doing these tests?

I'm pretty sure ds knows they've been doing old Sats papers as he mentioned that they were Sats but he doesn't know that the real thing is coming up.

What do/have you done (if you knew about it beforehand).

[mrz]

I agree with ipad there is no reason why schools should be practising for KS1 SATs

[TheGruffalo2]

I've done all mine already, so no parents can get in a panic and coach (I've had parents making their child retake and retake a paper at home until they got every question correct) or the children can get stressed about it by hearing what older siblings are saying about Year 6. I'm not even sure the vast majority of my class realise they have taken them, as I was so matter of fact about them being just another classroom activity so I could see what they can do by themselves to help me plan what they need to learn next.

[Feenie]

Yep, exactly how I taught Year 2, Gruffalo.

[MumTryingHerBest]

ipadquietly are you referring to yr 2 or yr6 SATs?

If you are referring to yr6 SATs, as of next year (or 2016 at the latest) results will be published in the public domain. A nice new addition to the league tables.

For those approaching yr2 SATs, don't put too much faith in SATs identifying your DCs ability. Some of the top performers in yr2 in my DSs class are now in middle groups, whereas some of the middle groups performers in yr2 are right at the top of the class. Personally I think using performance indicators in yr2 is way too early and gives very little indication as to the potential of a child. Perhaps this is why my DCs school also uses PIPS (performance indicators for Primary School).

[MotleyCroup]

I wish our school had done it this way, thegruffalo.

I can understand preparing for KS2 Sats but KS1 is a different story.

As it stands, it seems my hands are tied and I may have to tell him.

[mrz]

MumTryingHerBest the tread is about KS1 tests.

[mrz]

If you are referring to yr6 SATs, as of next year (or 2016 at the latest) results will be published in the public domain they always have been

thread not tread

[MumTryingHerBest]

mrz doh, ignore me lol [trys to gracefully bow out but stumbles on a toy whilst trying to do so]

[MumTryingHerBest]

mrz where can I find this information?

[BrendaFender]

Maybe they aren't practising? Some of my Y2 class have already taken some papers and won't be doing any more. I will be using them to back up my assessments in conjunction with the work in their books and so far so good!

I know of at least one school that do their papers in Feb / March.

[Feenie]

Search for your school on Ofsted's site and look at the dashboard.

[morethanpotatoprints]

Oh for the olden days when schools did them without informing parents or children, no pressure and kids actually learned interesting things, not just what was likely to be on the test.
I pity dc at school now. 3 years working for the first test and then another 4 years working for the second.

[BrendaFender]

Oh and we call them booklets - a bit twee but it separates them from the Y6 tests

[ouryve]

I did some old papers with DS1 at home because he was being particularly resistant to putting pencil to paper for any reason, in school, at the time. He went in actually looking forward to doing some at school - particularly because he got full marks on the maths paper I gave him!

[MumTryingHerBest]

Feenie thanks for that. Have to say that result have changed a lot in two years at my DCs school :-O

[MumTryingHerBest]

ovryve what do you think would have happened if you had not done the practice papers?

Just to be clear, I'm not challenging you or telling you that what you did was wrong. In fact I think a lot of parents do exactly what you have done.

[ouryve]

He has ASD and he'd already refused to sit one paper with his class, which is why I spent a small part of a weekend doing this. He thought it was rather good fun, after all. At that point, he needed a dry run in a non-threatening environment (at the dining table, with the radio on and no other annoying kids around) to take the fear out of it and make the disruption to his normal routine acceptable to him.

It wasn't even as if he hadn't seen the format before, as the maths coordinator assessed him in year 1 because he was clearly way ahead of his class. He's not so confident in literacy, though and it was a literacy paper that threw him. Being able to talk him through the wording of some of the questions helped him a lot, as he still had a lot of difficulties with pragmatic language at that stage.

I've actually taken refused class assessment papers home for him to do, since then (school trusts me!) but now he's in year 5, he rather enjoys sitting test papers, which isn't bad, considering he hates school.

[Hulababy]

I also agree that schools should not have to practise KS1 SATs papers.

[Feenie]

Not shouldn't have to, even - aren't allowed to.

[starlight1234]

My DS is year 2..I have no idea if he when his Sats are or were...

[Madcats]

The school told us they'd probably get them done by mid-May (but it sounded as if they would tweak timings if they knew children were away so as many of the class as possible would sit them together).

Judging by the way they moved all the desks and chairs around in yr 2 this week, I think DD's class probably did their maths SAT this week (when quizzed DD said they had a workbook called counting crocodiles).

It didn't seem to bother DD at all (but then she looks forward to her weekly spelling tests!!).

[PastSellByDate]

MumTryingherBest and any other parents out there.

KS2 Sats results (Performance tables) are available through: www.education.gov.uk/schools/performance/ - reporting of KS2 SATs results is a bit odd. They are released from the schools to individual Y6 pupils in end of year report, but not publically until December of the following school year.

If you type in your post code/ of the school's postcode - you can see the results (currently for test taken May 2013 - data released publically Dec 2013).

Menu on lower left of this web page will allow you to access data from previous years.

You also can type in name of your LEA KS2 results - and you'll get results for the LEA - so you can compare your school against other schools in the area/ although this is also available via Telegraph/ Guardian education sections on their websites. so for my LEA (Birmingham) I get this link: www.education.gov.uk/schools/performance/download/pdf/330_ks2.pdf - so look out for the link which matches this but has a different number for your LEA (so Birmingham is 330 - Waltham Forest is 320, etc...)

KS1 results aren't published in the same way - but some national data is avaiable here: nationalpupildatabase.wikispaces.com/KS1

Over the years I've found as a rule of thumb when schools do well - they announce immediately and when they haven't done so well they are awfully quiet.

HTH

[okiedokiejiggerypokie]

Personally, no I wouldn't tell Dc. I only actually found out about SATS when my (then) 6 yr old became very stressed about them.

From experience SATS are CONSTANTLY mentioned at Dc's school by certain CT's from the minute the Dc go into KS1 to apply unnecessary pressure and from what I have seen over the past 3 years (I have had a DS and 2 nephews enter the same class in KS1) it has caused self esteem issues and on one occasion school refusal.

[Feenie]

All that info is in one place - on the Ofsted dashboard, PSBD. Saves hopping about. You would need the middle link to find out the school's place in the league tables, but the dashboard ranks the school in quintiles against both all schools and similar schools.

[oddgirl]

I clearly remember KS1 sats for my DS with ASD. His fabulous teacher and I were so proud that he had remained in the classroom for them, tried his best and made tremendous progress socially and emotionally, the actual tests completely bypassed both of us....