SATS do you give a shit or do you not?!

[MidnightVelvetthe5th]

I do not. I have a Year 6 & a Year 2 so both are doing SATS this year. The Year 6 has had special class meetings about them & is worried about his potential scores, my Year 2 has come home with workbooks in English & Maths that were given to him 'as a present' by the teachers & he says we have to do them over the half term.

The school have put on special evening meetings for both year groups for parents to talk about how to improve their childrens scores' (I was working so had a good excuse for not attending) & I've had pages & pages of stuff come home in bookbags for my DC to do in their spare time.

My 10 year old was getting far too worried about them so basically I've taken the line that the results the children get are not important for the children themselves, they are for the school to show how good the teaching is and the new Head that has something to prove So I expect my DC to do their best certainly but I don't expect to be deluged with the bloody things or to have them encroach on holiday time.

Where does everyone else stand on them, are there parents who frantically work their way through the extra workbooks & I'm being weird by not doing so?

Sats are meaningless for individual children. The syllabus and marking criteria vary wildly every year. According to sats, I made no progress in 3 years at secondary school. They are utterly meaningless for the individual. Schools pile on the stress, peers pile on the stress, highly motivated conscientious pupils pile stress on themselves.

Mental health does suffer hugely, in susceptible people.

GCSEs have direct benefit to the student. They can be postponed, or retaken if the student is unwell. They can be taken in adulthood, if needed. In-school assessment assesses where that student is at for them. It can allow for an off day, and can be low key. Further assessments can be taken at any time to rectify an anomalous result. Sats is no use to the pupil concerned. Schools should help struggling pupils anyway, not out of fear.

I suspect those who view them as 'just tests' mostly aren't under 32.

I do dream of homeschooling for year 6 - whirlwind of adventures andtravelling and experiences before starting secondary proper.

Shipwrecked I agree up to a point.

I think my DD does need to start to learn not to panic in tests (which she does) and to be more accurate over her maths (which she isn't currently) and to pay attention to spellings and capitals in her writing (which she doesn't at the moment). All of these will incidentally improve her SATs results but are also needed for secondary.

Ideally I would also love her to get 'working towards' in her results. She has low self confidence and generally thinks she isn't very good at anything. If she gets lower than 'working towards' it will impact her yet again. Alternatively I could not tell her her results, but she's not actually stupid, so would know it meant she hadn't done well.

Plus actually her teacher and school are lovely and supportive, so I would also like her to do well for them too.

No, however I am very upset/ angry that my dd has learnt absolutely nothing this year other than how to obtain a good sats result.
She has Asd and takes them far to seriously, her cohort are Guinea pigs for the new sats and it's just not fair.

trying again

I do not give a shit, they are absolute bollocks. And I've been told by teacher friends that the changes to the curriculum, and the lateness in providing info about the current SATS, means some children will be cramming a ridiculous amount of work into a couple of months.

And I'm told by secondary teaching friends that they give not one shit about the results. The only thing we really learn from SATS is how well a school can teach how to pass bollocking SATS.

This is the kind of rubbish Y2 teachers are having to contend with right now:

schoolsweek.co.uk/key-stage-1-changes-take-writing-back-to-the-19th-century/

My only concern was the secondaries using them to set benchmarks on where they should be aiming for come GCSE time.

Unless things have changed radically in the 2 years since I retired it's not the secondaries which use them to set benchmarks for GSCE attainment, the benchmarks are imposed on secondaries. When it comes to the secs. performance being monitored there is an expectation that children who achieved a certain level at KS2 will then progress to a certain level at GCSE. If they don't achieve it the secondary is regarded as having 'failed' and no explanation will be accepted for the child's lower than expected level of achievement.
We had several cases over the years of children entering KS3 with highly inflated levels. In my last year I worked with a child who was supposedly L4 for English but who could barely read or write (should have been L2 at most). It was clear that there must have been an error in the marking of his papers but that cannot be challenged by the sec. and obviously a primary will not challenge a level that is advantageous for their results.

Fortunately it was rapidly realised that he had been allocated to a higher 'set' than he could cope with and we ran a very good intervention for reading and spelling so he had a chance to improve. But his externally predicted C grade will not be changed...Nor, I think, will his expected progress on the new Progress 8 measure. (But, knowing the school, he will do much better than many children in the same situation)

@karaokesmonkey
How did the SATs affect you so badly? I don't understand.
Who made you feel bad for no progress on paper?
What symptoms of bad stress did you have during or from KS2 SATs?

My DD sailed thru yr6 SATs with cheerful determination and was relaxed about whatever results she got.

Now she is having sobbing panic attacks over GCSEs. :( She wont' listen to a word I say about resits, different pathways to success, won't have it. We could have almost 3 yrs of panic attacks to deal with, assuming the panic doesn't extend into A-level yrs, too. One of her mates was cutting after bad result on a mock. These things didn't happen in primary school.

hi i am new to posting so please be kind but having read all your threads relating to the sats i would love it if you would click on the link, i have set up an online petition to abolish the sats! my twins are in y6 and the pressure they are being put under is ridiculous, constant booster groups and at least an hours revision every night for the next 10 weeks. I may not be in time to save this years kids but if we can do something for the ones coming through then that would be great,thanks for your support

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/121902/sponsors/K32i2e2ltyfHeafvrMIe

please pass it on to as many people as you can it would be great to make the government sit up and take notice of all the parents out there

constant booster groups and at least an hours revision every night for the next 10 weeks

to be fair, that is your school, not SATs per se.

My year 6 will do some of the books that school have sent home but only as part of the standard homework.

Did any of you going "I don't understand!"to how sats affected me and my peers badly sit the full complement of sats?

I do not wish to tell my story, or that of my friends to internet randoms. It's private.

I view sats as being like a clinical trial- your child may be fine, especially if in the placebo arm (luckily in a school and peer group that doesn't stress), although there are side effects even from placebo. However, if your child is in the treatment arm (stressy school/peer group), the side effects could be really nasty.The clinical trial doesn't directly benefit your child in any way, but it does contribute to a wider understanding of medicines and treatments.

Just because the effects of sats are on mental wellbeing, doesn't make them insignificant.

I think there is a lot of cognitive dissonance around sats on here. People realize they're a measure for the school. They know that, unlike GCSEs/A levels, your child will never need to declare the results in life. Sats are so crap at actually assessing kids, that secondary schools do their own assessments, and set on that. It would be a poor secondary school who saw a potential A student, but said "no, we can't aim for an A for them, as their sats results only predict a B", that would be shooting themselves in the foot. Assessments internally, are usually marked fairly and usefully, and are useful for the child. GCSEs happen a whole 5 years later with 5 years more maturity and coping skills. Sats take place at a hugely vulnerable time- aged 11, still very young, just facing the biggest upheaval of their school career, and starting adolescence. Unlike GCSEs, they can't be retaken later, leading to kids thinking this is a 'one chance'. Expecting a child to be ok with formal external, inconsistent, syllabus shifting,politically driven assessments at the tender age of 11 because they'll take GCSEs aged 16 is like wondering why your 12 year old can't start driving lessons because they'll take their driving test at 17.

Essentially there are two facts:

1.Sats are useless to the child.

1. Sats cause stress, and sometimes damage.

But those two facts conflict with point 3. Most parents allow their kids to sit sats.

So, to reconcile those points, as most parents on here wouldn't let their child do something useless and damaging is that parents convince themselves that sats are of some use, and that secondary schools are so stupid they cannot possibly assess your child without them.

And there was me thinking secondary schools employed qualified teachers who are more than capable of assessing pupils internally within the first term. Those who come from private schools, abroad, home ed must all cope somehow. But to reconcile their own cognitive dissonance, many posters here appear to believe these pupils without sats results wander around lost in some limbo of misplacement on arrival at secondary. Most of the secondaries around here sit CATS, or similar, in the first term, as they don't even trust sats!

Oh, and I wouldn't put DD in a clinical trial that had no benefit to her, and may cause harm. I'm not that altruistic. Whether she wanted to be in it or not. Because she is 11, and I am her mum.

I would really love to not give a shit about Y6 SATS. However, I worry about linking results to predict GCSE grades (a practice I find infuriating), so I'm finding that sadly, I do give a shit (and I hate that I do!).

I hate Y6. I'm not anti-testing within reason, but every bloody week of this year the poor kids have been tested, or done a mock, or assessment etc. It's relentless and awful and I wouldn't be surprised if some kids turned off school entirely.

It's totally grim for two godawful terms, and then a term of total nonsensense like the school musical and endless assemblies and eye-wateringly expensive residentials. I'd just like a little bit of education in their last year of primary.

However, I worry about linking results to predict GCSE grades (a practice I find infuriating), so I'm finding that sadly, I do give a shit (and I hate that I do!)

As a secondary school teacher, I know that my dd will be set targets that are out of the control of her teachers, based on KS2 tests and CATs. I also know that these will be used to judge her teachers performance and the performance of the school by OFSTED.

However, I also know that her teachers will make their own assessment of her and that these targets will not be the most important thing that determines how well she does in the end. Her motivation to do well and her enthusiasm for learning will. Both of which are at risk due to SATs prep, ironically.

So I am working hard to keep her grounded about it all.

Sats aren't completely irrelevant to the secondary I work at. Despite doing CATS, year 7 are set for maths and English using their sats levels.

ranatemp and those with no sats levels?

(Although MN wisdom is that they'll languish in the bottom set, of course, because schools aim to assume the worst.)

Initially, yes. But they change as the students settle and progress (or at least, they should)

Shipwrecked, I'd like to be reassured by your posts. I know that in theory, sets are supposed to be fluid, but in practise, at least at primary, I've found that they are not. So a bright kid but late starter struggles to catch up, as they've been labelled as "less able" or some such tosh.

Is your experience different?

I have been a state secondary school teacher for 24 years and directly responsible for setting in science at KS3 for the last 7 years. I can't speak for all schools but I can for mine.

At primary school, my kids have not been in sets. That has not been possible due to small size.

My 10 year old was getting far too worried about them so basically I've taken the line that the results the children get are not important for the children themselves, they are for the school to show how good the teaching is and the new Head that has something to prove
I never understand why poster would do this to their children. I see it on MN a lot. Nice children would want to please their teacher/ school and would worry more about it.

FWIW my dc loved their SATs year, they had booster classes in the morning which were't compulsary but all the dc turned up.

DC secondary school did take notice of SATs and used those and CATS to set from day one (CATs taken on school transfer day) Their results (raw scores) were on the epage of their school records all the way through secondary school.

.Sats are useless to the child.

nonsense

2. Sats cause stress, and sometimes damage.
that is more to do with the child, parenting and school than SATs themselves. My dc loveds the challenge of them.