Home ed for one term/SATs

[karaokesmokey]

I'm considering home education for the half term between Easter and May half term for DD in year six. Re SATs-Yes, that is deliberate, and the point.

We don't have pressure on school places here, and DD is in the 2nd admission criteria. I do not imagine they will fill her place, and that is a risk I'm willing to take. (Worst case scenario, I can home ed for the second half of the term, too).

The school will not be chuffed, for obvious reasons. My question is, if they have a place available, and we are top of the list, and apply for it just before May half term for her to return after the half term, can they deny her it?

I don't wish to discuss the merits of SATs here, just whether pissing the school off can affect admissions.

Alternatively, is the £60 fine per absence, or per day? If DD misses SATs week, and I've ensured she's had access to the internet, my reading tells me she then can't sit them. Is that true?

I disapply a small proportion of children from SATS every year. Children who are working significantly below the standard of the text

That's not disapplication - that's 'working below the level of the tests' and as such is not disapplication, with a completely different coding. You would think, as a head of threeschools you would know this?

children who don't speak enough English to participate
Ditto - working below, but may apply to remove results if new arrival from a non-speaking English country. So not disapplication.

child whose father died in the month before the test
Separate procedures, not disapplication - unfortunately had to do the same.

and twice children whose parents, like the OP, utterly objected to the whole principle of formal testing for their children and didn't want them to participate.
Not allowed, illegal, and completely failing in your statutory duty as a head of a maintained primary school - see any ARA, for any year, ever.

UNLESS, you run academies, in which case, you are being slightly economical with the truth here in not sharing that with MN parents, since:

The Key Stage (KS) 1 and KS2 assessment and reporting arrangements (ARA) explain that academies must follow this guidance if their funding agreements say they must comply with guidance issued by the secretary of state in relation to assessments and children's performance.

So, what sort of primary schools do I work in? The kind of schools that are obliged to follow statutory requirements, like the schools most of MN send their children to - and I am entirely clear on the legal requirements of those schools.

My post re your shitty advice relates to advising an 11 year old and their parent to simply not comply with tests, which is just an awful position to.put any child in. Dreadful, dreadful advice.

Are you seriously suggesting that teachers, whose main reason for entering the profession in the first place is to EDUCATE BUT ALSO CARE FOR CHILDREN, would be so petty, so vindictive, so unprofessional as to penalise and victim a child simply not sitting the SATS tests.

Of course I am not! I am questioning the wisdom of a head who a) fails to mention the possibility of different requirements of academies depending on funding and b) your incredibly sketchy knowledge of the statutory - legal - requirements of state schools.

These children can normally be found sat in a year 5 classroom joining in or down in the infants helping out while others are sitting tests

In 20 odd years of teaching, and 10 years on MN, have never seen this, or seen anyone posting this. Ever.

Yes I'm fully behind the current Union action as I always am. But all I've ever seen is unions caving under the smallest pressure.

So, none of your schools presumably participated in the 2010 boycott? Excellent! Except - did you have to? What exactly do your funding regulations state?

We were one of the few schools in my area that boycotted the tests in 2010 ... I'm not sure we would do the same in 2016

The unions decided in 2010 but many schools/teachers went against that decision leaving those that took industrial action (boycott) very vulnerable

Combine that with many weeping children who wanted to take the tests (yes our pupils are odd perhaps because tests are no big deal) to show how hard theyd worked and what they'd learnt.

My ds loves test, and couldn't careless about the result(He isn't competitive at all.) So, he doesn't mind any test. But I can understand some children can be completely destroyed by the result of a test. If the child is high achiever and very competitive, and there's a chance they might do badly because of unknown issues, parents naturally would like to protect them from it happening.

I wonder if the OP let her DD take SATs, if it was last year.

I don't think she would have let her. OP was against SATs because she took them and had a bad experience (that would have been the old SATs).

Just to throw in that you might not avoid SATs if you enrol her in a private school. The three preps which feed into ds's senior school all have their pupils take the SATs.

"If the child is high achiever and very competitive, and there's a chance they might do badly because of unknown issues, parents naturally would like to protect them from it happening."

Agreed. But the OP said this wasn't the case.

But isn't it wrong? Deciding what you let your DC do by your own experience? I would totally back OP, if it was her DD who decided not to do it, but it wasn't clear, since she didn't want to share the info.(which is totally understandable.)

Absolutely. I think the OP is being completely wrong headed for all sorts of reasons. And incredibly unfair to her dd.

But she did say that it is not a case of her dd not doing well. "in fact the exact opposite" were her words.

Feenie - ffs! I shall not respond anymore to your rude postings. I'm delighted to know that your knowledge is so superior to mine. I do of course understand the difference in the codings but wonder how on earth would typing out the difference between a 'b' or 'd' code have added to the information I was giving? The children are disapplied, under which code is irrelevant to the OP. A parent can remove her child from SATS tests, whilst still retaining the place at school - that's it - bottom line. You can also choose for your children not to sit GCSEs btw. Phone your HT Union, speak to a education lawyer rather than insist you know better!! What on earth do you think happens - the exam police turn up and frog march the children into the exam room! And every school I have ever worked in, been in or know of, has the group of disapplied children working in a different classroom during the tests - where else would they go? Anyway, enough I'm off to enjoy the rest of my half term. BTW, as you are all knowing I'm sure you must know how incorrect your assertion was regarding academies - the ARA is the same for all state funded schools - being an academy makes no difference! See page 1.

I'm not sure avoiding challenges in life is the best way to help a child develop resilience.

Oddly enough, OP kept saying how she didn't want to talk about her reasons on this thread, but she did talk about them on the other thread about SATs.

And yes, nothing to do with her daughter. Only not wanting her to experience what OP went through when she had to take the SATs.

BTW, as you are all knowing I'm sure you must know how incorrect your assertion was regarding academies - the ARA is the same for all state funded schools - being an academy makes no difference! See page 1.

My 'assertion' was copied and pasted from the 2016 ARA, effic.

Disapplication is extremely rare, and doesn't apply to the majority of your examples. It certainly doesn't apply to children whose parents don't 'want' them to sit SATs

And I don't believe that you have a group of children every year whose parents refuse to let them sit SATs.

Btw, anyone can call you out on MN for giving crap advice - it's allowed, and it's not 'rude'.

I've worked with a lot of families where anxieties experienced by the parents - sadly, usually the mum - are passed on to the child. It's very difficult to support the child when the parent is convinced nothing can be done, based on their own experience.

The fact the OP has left the thread shows she is not prepared to accept that her child is very likely to have a different experience to the one the OP had, because she is a different person.

I do wonder how much advice the OP sought before taking the radical step of removing her child from their school and their friends for half a term because of her own unresolved issues.

Suburban - I think you're right. The OP has huge issues about SATs due to personal experience.

But it's incredibly hard to get help for this. And equally hard to get understanding.

As this thread shows.

I don't think I'll ever be able to resolve my issues around this type of thing. And I have been to a counsellor.

A parent can request that their child doesn't take the test but ultimately it is the head's decision whether the child sits the SATs or not effic.

The thing that has stood out to eon this thread is everyone saying that the child will miss out on the fun in the last bit of school after the tests. The child can still have fun whilst being home ed! (If not more because it doesn't need to end at three pm!)

ChalkHearts, I can understand what you are saying, but is it a good idea to project that on dc's life? Soon, dcs have to get on with their own lives, and parents cannot protect them from outside world forever.

chemical

I don't think anyone has said it's not possible to have fun at home.

The difference with post-SATs fun is that it's all about the reward after the hard work, doing things you've never done before in school (residential), going to the leavers service (for our Year 6s, it's at the cathedral, which is lovely), spending time at your new school (not always lovely but useful) and so on.

Although there are some bits of the end of Year 6 I don't like, I think in general it's a rite of passage and something most schools spend a lot of time planning so the children have a good send-off.

Irvine - I don't think you understand. When you're really anxious you don't choose to project it on to your children. There's nothing you can do. You can't stop yourself from showing your anxiety.

If you could choose not to show it then you wouldn't have this level of anxiety.