SATs - explaining why they are important to my Y6 DS

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My son is currently in a state primary but will be going to an independent secondary school. He is sitting all the Level 6 SATs. He is questioning me as to why SATs are important and why people are getting so stressed about them versus any other assessment. I haven't told him that his secondary school will in all likelihood ignore his SATs results.

What do you think I can tell him? Why ARE they so important?

Forgot to ask Laqueen im midlands did you do kings consortium and the walsall/wolves one? - was it heavy on the english than maths compares to other counties? and any advice!

Thanks laqueen Im hot on the heels of his times tables he has a few different things he does. its keeping it going without going mental but not losign momentum. DS is only year 3. He's already nudging a L4 so Im not worried about his maths but his English I need to be a bit proactive about - just following list for vocab at the moment.

Puts children under too much pressure too young, for reasons totally unesessary imho.

I'm just lucky that my dd particular school are making the effort to treat pupils to complementary breakfast of croissants, fruit etc every morning and a trip to london fri

Quite frankly, my son has had a crap education from teachers in his primary school who have no concept of his dyslexia. (The Head tells the teachers that the word "dyslexia" is not even allowed to be said by them) I hope that gets reflected in his SATS results. I've told him not to worry about them and that the SATS say more about the school than it does about him.

migsy that is appalling, there are unfortunately some dinosaurs around. There is a local head near us that has an apalling record of transfers out for children with additional needs.

Is it worth writing to the LEA cc Board of governors in?

andsmile I have spoken to one of the Governers recently. Thankfully, the high school middle DS is going to has a good SENCO (eldest already there). All my 3 children are dyslexic and the issue has been a battle with the primary school for years. I've reached the point now where I am tired of the battle and I am going to have to remove my youngest from the school in order to avoid further harm to his education. It is a last resort but I cannot take the risk of leaving him there :(

Sorry - a bit off topic there but it is relevant to my view of SATS.

Low DD2 reckons the L6 papers she has done so far have been far easier than the 11+ was. Although, she is talking about 11+ english and maths papers, not VR which is a different animal altogether.

Sounds like you are don the right thing to cut your losses with that school Migsy1 I am pleased you feel more confident in your high school and have and established rapport with he SENCO.

I'm just lucky that my dd particular school are making the effort to treat pupils to complementary breakfast of croissants, fruit etc every morning and a trip to london fri

So does mine. So what? Does nothing to mitigate the constant revision revision revision since last half term, or the mounting stress and stupidly large amounts of homework. Or the fact that, from tomorrow, they'll do sod-all academic learning.

HercShipwright Perhaps for your DD2, but there would be a lot more L6 Reading passes if it were relatively easy for all children who have passed 11+.

SixImpossible Bah humbug. My Y6 child is still a child so I'm pleased they'll spend a few weeks free of the bean-counting. What they will be doing is all good stuff and some is even on the curriculum, just not in the part the state (currently represented by Mr Gove) insists on measuring.

piqueaboo The 11+ is different in each area. Some areas they just do VR and NVR. Neither of which would help with L6 or indeed L5 reading papers. Those kids who have had to do a written English paper, with a comprehension and an essay - have had a different experience though.

DS2's teacher is looking forward to getting back to some worthwhile teaching once the SATs are over, so I don't think all Y6 pupils will be enjoying holidays-at-school for the next two months.

To their credit, they have never piled on the stress or homework over SATs. The catchment high school is pretty cynical about seeing large numbers of L6 results, and uses its own assessments for setting purposes; consequently only a tiny number of children have been entered for one or two of the L6 papers where they could reasonably expect to pass without the unnecessary burden of extra lessons and homework. The school achieves good results without getting the kids wound up about it, which is about the best you can hope for. What I wondered was, if parents were comparing that school with one of a similar size that had got more L6 results, wouldn't there be a temptation to think the school with the higher levels was somehow 'better'?

I wouldn't Brecon but only because I don't think most Yr 6 children can get Level 6 SATs without a massive amount of extra work which is not justified and which most school wouldn't and couldn't afford to do. I wouldn't want my child to go to a school that crams either. Really it should only be the brightest of the bunch who takes them so it is down to the cohort rather than teaching if a school has a good year.

I'm not entirely sure that L6's are even reported in the league tables? I could be wrong. It might be difficult to compare two schools on that basis.

DS2's school still makes the children work after SATs but they also have their week's residential to look forward so they will still be busy. I think they do the final teachers assessment later in the term as well so the teachers need to be showing progress.

DD2 certainly hasn't done a 'massive amount of extra work' for L6. They had 3 after school maths sessions. and a few lunchtime english sessions but since those were also packed with L5 kids (only about 4 kids were taking L6) they didn't do much L6 stuff at all. It is what it is. Part of me is sad and frustrated that DD2 has been allowed/forced to coast all year, part of me accepts that this is the way the school operates, she is DC3 so it's not like we didn't know. We considered moving her at the end of Y5, and didn't because we didn't want her to be disrupted before the 11+. So, we made our decision and we were aware of the likely consequences - the good ones outweighed the bad. Right now we are seeing the downside, but we saw the upside (her not being completely disrupted right before the 11+) last autumn. In the big picture, we made the right decision.

You've missed the point. L6 is more about the children than the school. It isn't feasible for most children to do L6 because it is for the brightest children. Therefore the number of L6 children is reflection on the ability of the children in the cohort not on the teaching and makes a poor indicator of the teaching in the school. My DS2 will do L6 papers next year but he won't have extra homework or classes to achieve that, unless things are radically different from this year, so whether he gets them or not will be his achievement not the school's.

PiqueABoo so why can't the non-academic learning, the good stuff, be spread throughout the year? What's the point in doing a tteam-building residential at the end of Y6?

IMO one of the worst aspects of SATs is how they skew and distort the learning year.

The good bits are spread across the year in DS's school. They have very little extra homework - just a few short exercises for the Easter hols. They still do trips and have art week or whatever, throughout the year. The residential is after the SATs this year because they have to take what is given by the study centre. Most years that means going before the SATs. This year they have been given a week in the second half of the summer term. Nice for them - why shouldn't they go?

I am always shocked, every year, that so many schools still cram for SATs and that parents put up with it. It might be a happy result of the teachers' performance reviews that all teachers have to show progress amongst their children and therefore the onus won't be entirely on the Yr 6 teachers in these schools to make all the progress the children should have made across the rest of their time in the juniors. Perhaps there will be less need for cramming.

I think BigBoobied you do raise a good point but I am fairly dubious about dear old St. Mediocre putting forward 11 pupils out of 30 for L6 reading/ SPAG and 15 pupils out of 30 for L6 Maths.

Certainly have never seen L6 materials come home (all revision material was clearly labelled Levels 3 - 5/ Achieving Level 5 - and we've had hundreds of pages in the last month). Most of the Year the 'high ability' group (single form class of 30 split into two ability groups) had substitute teachers and the low ability group had the main teacher.

I guess L6 scores will be reported in performance tables (obviously we have to wait until December 2014 - but it will be interesting to see how many actually achieved L6). I have my doubts where DD1 is concerned.

SixImpossible Because they think it's less likely to be very cold and raining (hah!) when running around those woods?

I see DD's forthcoming residential being about responsibility, team-work in any team not a specific one, character-building and why-not-fun-stuff.

It tailed off this term, but we've had good stuff throughout the year, there's simply more at the end. We've also got a Y6 show, which being a quite substantial undertaking seems much better than a few bite-sized tick-box lessons (drama, music, dance etc.) dotted through the year. There are also days at the upstream secondary where they can learn to be patronised. Some inter-school sports which again need optimistic summer weather. Days of art and DT where they can do something non-trivial for once. Etc.

PSBD I suspect you and probably others might find a couple of parts of this interesting:

giftedphoenix.wordpress.com/2014/05/14/a-closer-look-at-level-6/

There is an elusive table of percentage-entered-to-passed in there (for 2013) and people might want to contemplate whether their DC's ethnic background is Chinese.

I agree that the L6 tests should be for the brightest - DD2's school has put forward 5 children for L6 reading and SPaG and 9 for maths, out of a cohort of 60.

They have done a lot of work in preparation - they got RI in last year's OFSTED so panicked a bit - but to be fair to them there has been support for everyone not just the ones on level borderlines.

There has been plenty of 'good stuff' throughout the year if DD's workbooks are anything to go by, though the past term has been a bit tougher, and I've seen the plan for the rest of the year - it's certainly not going to be wall to wall partying.