SATs Year 6 SPAG

[time4chocolate]

Hello - wondered if there was anyone out there who is knowledgeable on year 6 SATs levels?

My DD has received her SATS scores today and has achieved levels 3a in Maths & English & 4c in Science which we are chuffed to bits with as she has a learning difficulty and through hard work and determination she has made more than two sub levels of progress. However, with Spelling and Grammar paper she has recorded a level of 'N'. I am not sure what this means, does it mean no progress made or possibly too low to level? Any guidance much appreciated.

As far as I know, it means she scored too low to level. But I don't think the spelling and grammar results are being taken that seriously this year anyway as it's still a very new paper. Try not to worry about it. Sounds like she's done very well to overcome her learning difficulty and make progress.

It means that she was working below level 3. Did she sit the test? If so, the school must have felt that she was capable of getting a level 3 (because she should have been disapplied if not) but she didn't get the required amount.

Does she find spelling particularly difficult? Or all the technical language associated with grammar?

Ellie6655 - that's reassuring to know thank you.

MrsKCastle - yes she did sit the test but, you have hit the nail on the head with regard to technical language. This is a real problem for her across all subjects, for example in Maths she will be easily able to do the sum 23-7 but if she was asked "what's the difference between 7 and 23' she would struggle with the language used. In English she struggles greatly with comprehension, her reading speed is that of a 12 year old but her actual understanding of what she is reading is much below her age. I have not seen a SPAG paper but, if there was a lot of technical language in it then that could well explain the 'N' mark.

To get a level 3 you needed 25 out of 70. less than that you get an N.

There were 20 marks for spelling (And none of the words were easy) and the rest for vocab, punctuation and gammer.

The grammer section is all about technical language. (clauses, tenses, parts of speech etc)

It'd be very very easy for a child who was weak at either language or English to get an N.

Yes, as Endofprimary says, the short answer test is very technical- underline all the adverbs, fill the gap with a suitable adjective, tick to say whether the underlined section is a main clause or subordinate clause- that sort of thing.

sounds like your daughter has worked really hard : ) . The SPAG paper was very wordy . If you want to see the actual papers they sat they are here
www.primarytools.co.uk/pages/pastpapers.html