7yr old given YR6 paper. Teachers?

[Wizard19]

My DD 7yrs has parents evening in 2 weeks. Have been doing some assessments at school.

Whole class given a Maths paper to do, level 2 - 3. She was then given an extra Mental Maths test, and a full end of KS2 year 6 exam paper A( Level 3 - 5).

Teachers out there, is there no other bridging test to give a more accurate indication of a childs current ability. Many elements in the paper in question have not been covered by the teacher, one question involves drawing an irregular polygon with angles given, requiring use of a protractor.

Is that not too much testing for a 7yr old back to back?

How would you assess? I would expect the teacher to make up more questions to probe specifically at arrears of the curriculum covered to level 3.

my daughter is level 3 in maths in yr2 and they just use the level 3 paper. I am quite happy that they don't go any further than that to be honest because in september it will be irrelevant anyway as they move onto the new curriculum etc and whilst I know she is capable of doing a lot more than is required at this stage there is also plenty of time to do it and I don't want her aiming to do GCSE early in secondary school anyway so I can't see the point in them going too far with stuff. She likes the investigation maths she is being given instead so she is applying what she knows and is therefore occupied.

I was under the impression that there were optional SATS (as in used to be but now on new curriculum I have no idea) for yrs 3, 4 and 5 so surely the school could have used them instead?

Hi, nonicknameseemsavailable
Your daughter is doing very well.

That extra investigative maths you mentioned would be good.

I try to do investigative, but end up running into a new maths topic. Last night we were talking about football, and DD was asking about different scores and asked if there are many 0-0 scores.

Investigation followed, ended up talking about mean, mode, median. Which she now understands - but helps to strengthen ordering numbers, adding multiple numbers and division in a more practical way.

I think I am making things worse.

I would only expect the school to use a KS2 test if they believed the child was working at level 4 (or above) and wanted additional evidence to support this assessment. There are level 2 and level 3 test papers in KS1 but the school should only be using one not both.

Thanks mrz,
DD told scored 45 from all three Y6 papers. Not been given a level, I suspect will mainly be based on teacher assessment. Will wait and see.

I told her that 45% is a great score considering.

I am not entirely sure what they do in the investigative stuff but I know she enjoys it - it involves more stuff like magic squares and that kind of thing I think. I don't think DD is a natural mathematician, there are others in the class who are much quicker with it than her, but she is clever and she does like a challenge so works very hard.

If she likes maths have a look at these, can't vouch for how hard the maths is in them as we only got them today and I haven't had a chance to look at them properly but we have had others in the same series - science ones, history ones and the Rubiks ones (which are a mix of maths, engineering, computing and robotics) and my daughter loves them so the maths ones will be good I expect.
www.thebookpeople.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/qs_product_tbp?productId=246984&storeId=10001&catalogId=10051&langId=100

it might actually be more than 45% she got - I think SATS seem to be out of things like 30.

That's the KS1 papers, nonickname. Ks2 tests over three Maths papers add up to 100.

Turning the score into a % does not help you to understand how well she achieved in the maths SAT paper. They have thresholds, which change slightly each year. The thresholds cover from below L2 to L5.

For example in 2014 the maths thresholds were 18 to 45 for L3 and 46 to 78 for L4. So she is likely to have been only a few marks off achieving L4 or, depending on the year of the SAT she took, could have achieved L4 (I've no idea how low the L4 threshold has been to say if this is possible or not, but you could ask the school).

Remember based on the old curriculum a high level 3 (which she is likely to have achieved unless thresholds vary much more widely) is the level expected at the end of year 5!

It seems like an extremely good mark given her age. So well done to your DD

It's out of 100, diamondage - the mark is the same as the %!

Yes, thanks Feenie, my first sentence should start:

Her score does not help you to understand ...

As it was the 2014 test used the thresholds are available a score of 45 equates to level 3

Thanks all.
It was the 2011 paper.

DD has been given a level 4C based on testing and school work.

The mark was 45 but not a true percent, as child was not given a calculator for the second test, and was told to leave out 4 questions. Which she could have worked out.

She is able to use a calculator, so I am a little disappointed that her mark is not directly comparable.

Well done indeed

The calculator paper has been scrapped since 2011, so many schools try to make the result comparable to up to date papers by not letting children use them for past papers. It's not an exact science, as you can probably guess.

45 was the exact mark needed to scrape a 4 in 2011, so am assuming her classwork is much more consistent at 4 for her school to quote it as a solid teacher assessment at this stage in Y2.

Apologies, as did not spot earlier references. DD is 7 now and will be at end of school year. She is one of the youngest, but still a yr3.

Still a good score.

Had to correct, don't want to shock some with children in yr2.

Wizard19:

I'm not a teacher, but as a parent it was quite normal from Y3 (bearing in mind Y3 - Y6 is Key Stage 2) for our old primary to have pupils sit past Key Stage 2 SATs papers several times a year (DD1 now in Y7 and DD2 is at a new primary because we moved).

I do get your query that surely there should be something more specific to Year 3 or Key Stage 2 lower (Y3/ Y4) - but since that form of testing doesn't exist nationally - suppliers of test (not the government but private companies making a profit from national testing) wouldn't be paid to devise such a paper and therefore it doesn't exist.

I'm not sure if you're raising this because you feel that it is unfair to your child to have to sit a paper a Year 6 pupil will set at the end of KS2 - but perhaps a different perspective may help - perhaps viewing it as an opporutnity with no cap on her performance (so right up to NC Level 5a, which is likely to be way beyond the vast majority of Year 3 pupils' ability) and to just see how she does.

I am also slightly perplexed that you are equating Nc levels with school years - Level 3 = Year 3. Which also may not necessarily be the case for all Year 3 pupils. MN has a little note here about expected progress through NC Levels (and yes I know these are going to be dropped - but for the moment and as Wizard19's OP is using 'Levels' it may help to explain it a bit better): www.mumsnet.com/learning/assessment/progress-through-national-curriculum-levels - scroll down to the tables at the bottom

HTH

But there are/were papers for year 3, 4 and 5 ( just google Optional SATS papers for these year groups!) which would be more appropriate that a year 6 paper, simply because of the focus of the questions and the level set. For example a year4 maths paper B covers from level 3c to 4A with the majority of the questions geared around the 3a/4c boundary. This would be a better test of a child working at this level than a paper that stretches from level 3c to 5a where the number of 3a/4c qustions is limited. Teachers should be using a paper which most closely matches their teacher assessment to provide supporting evidence, not picking a paper from the shelf and seeing what the outcome is!

Spaniel:

Didn't know about these - certainly DDS sat Y6 SATs past papers (as downloaded from free on-line sites) at their school. (deifnitely the case because DD1 who has a very visual memory - can recall which papers she has sat in classes when I was downloading some for her as part of homework from teacher in Y6).

I think some schools 'save money' by not buying in such resources - if they are freely available on line can I suggest that you post the link - in this way teachers will find out about it and hopefully can give age appropriate SATs style testing as you suggest.

What class was your child in when she sat past year 6 papers PSBD?

The optional tests for Y3-5 gave been around for years and many schools use them as part of their summative assessment process.
Obviously schools are going to need new versions to match the year group expectations of the current curriculum.

Thereare plenty of options primarytools.co.uk/pages/pastpapers.html is easy to navigate!
But as mrz says, new versions are going to be needed as these dont match current expectations!

We now buy in standardised assessment papers which match the new curriculum ( an additional expense Gove hasn't thought about!) which we use ALONGSIDE the end of year/key stage expectations.

Many publishers have jumped on the bandwagon to supply schools with alternatives but there plenty of free assessment resources available.

Hi mrz:

St. Mediocre used past SATs papers - KS1 papers for Years 1/2 and KS2 papers for Y3 - Y6 (which looked just like the link spaniel sent me to - at least I couldn't see a tailored SATs paper for Year 3 ability (maybe NC L2 - NC L4) but I didn't look exhauastively). I know one parent complained vociferously because her Y3 DS was SEN and was not even working NC L2 - so found the KS2 papers impossible and very upsetting.

Certainly kids were tested start and toward end of school year Y3 - Y5. Y6 they did past papers every week - sometimes the whole KS2 SATS + Science in preparation for May exams.