Teachers, are you willing to share your views on the accuracy, or inaccuracy, of the optional SATS tests?

[bookwormitis]

Obviously these will be truly obsolete next year, however while year 2 are still being assessed via old NC levels, what's your view on their accuracy?

I've noticed the thresholds of the yr 3 English SAT are quite compressed for each sublevel with either 3 or 4 points per sublevel, except for below L2 (8 points) and Level 4 (also 8 points).

I know there's a difference between TA and SATS and also get why the former is more accurate than the latter. But by how much? One sublevel, two, more? Were these tests every considered useful or used much by schools?

As soon as APP were produced we felt optional SATs were obsolete. incredibly easy to 'achieve' a level 4 in the y4 paper. They children could get all the HO questions wrong and still score a L4.

Some areas may have used them or felt they were reliable but none in my area. We get together for joint moderate between schools in order to ascertain the reliability of our TA judgements.

The Year 4 Antarctica one and the Year 5 Space one were FAR too generous.

Anyway, no levels now...

Yes, I did wonder! Still using levels for year 2 and 6 though.

Do these views apply to SATS tests generally, or just these optional ones?

I mean do children usually score above their TA in SATS tests?

Depends on the child. Depends on the day. Depends on the year the paper was produced.

Optional SATs have never been an accurate or useful way of assessing a child's level. They are however vaguely useful for seeing how well a child can perform in a test and how much they can remember outside of normal structured lessons.

As everyone else said. One tool which gives an indication of what a child can do independently but used alongside other assessment methods ie APP to build up a picture of the child's attainment.

Don't forget that the year 2 SATS don't give the whole picture. I was very, very clearly told by my local authority assessment adviser and Maths adviser that I should but very little weight on the results of the SATS tests. They said that as the papers are available on line to download, there's no guarantee that a child hasn't already done the paper at home with their parents. Legally, a set of papers still has to be done but what they tell a teacher is of limited value. I was told to do the papers earlier in the year and then use them to inform my future teaching rather than at the end of the year. They are just part of the tools a teacher will use to produce their teacher assessment.

And this is the last year of them anyway - shiny new world out there next year, whatever it ends up looking like.