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?

Actually totally forgot to say, my ds is dylexic so had a lot of extra help to get him up to level 4 for written english. SATs did a huge amount to boost his confidence because he ended up with 96% for science. Primary school doesnt really measure what my ds was good at ie analysis and logic so getting such a high mark in science was the confidence boost he needed to start secondary

Bruffin, am I right in thinking you don't have a kid in the current year 6? Because it's different this year.

"Sats are useless to the child.

nonsense"

It's not nonsense; it's fact. SATs have never been 'for the child' - that wasn't why they were introduced. They are supposed to be a way of assessing teaching standards in individual schools... and it's a long while since they've been fit for that purpose, if they ever were.

Shipwreck
Every single year for the last 10 years we have the same threads,and this thread is the same as every thread before it.

Multivac, sats results are very much part of the childs school record and have always been, so they are important for the child.

I am aware of previous posts in previous years.

But I must restate that the SATs have changed this year. They are not the same exams and not testing the same work. This year's cohort are facing an series of exams based on work they have not been taught because the programme of study has changed. The expectation is that they should be getting nearer the old level 5 (but in different work content) in order to show they have met primary expectations. There is no science exam.

Who gives a toss about a child's "school record"? Seriously?

They are used to make external predictions about outcomes at the end of KS4, that's all. They don't actually predict anything. And before you mention 'setting', not all schools set - and it's certainly not obligatory.

My now 15 yr old was babied and coached through his SATs, and got a level 4.
These scores set his GCSE targets (he is targeted a B, or whatever equivalent that is), when in reality he is struggling to head for a D, which to us is a more realistic expectation of his abilities, he is not academic at all.

Ds2 is in yr 6, the pressure has been on since September. He has ASD and is very anxious. We have told him not to worry about it. Tbh with him we have no option, if we put the pressure on too and encouraged revision it would backfire and we probably wouldn't get him into school come SATs week!

My dc school set from day one, so it was important. It is a really lovely school with fantastic pastoral care., so yes it does matter.

And from Dec 2017, they'll be used as an indicator of whether a child needs to retake in secondary school if they are not ' at expected'.

That's going to be a.game changer in terms of whether results matter or not at secondary.

Is it such a lovely school, bruffin, that if they realised a child's SATs results weren't an accurate or fair reflection of his/her actual ability, they would adjust both his/her set placement and indeed his/her KS4 targets accordingly?

Yes?

Then.... SATs aren't that important, are they?

And no?

Then... not a school I'd choose for a child of mine.

I don't understand why people get so very worked up about SATs. I can understand why some people are completely opposed to any sort of exam-type assessment, and I am inclined that way myself, especially for younger children, but if you don't object to assessment per se, why are SATs any different from, say, the end of year exams a lot of private schools do? And they are certainly less stressful than the 11+, which many people are keen to see reintroduced.

And it's not a special sort of maths and English they're learning- it's just maths and English.

Incidentally, there are secondary schools where they base initial setting on SATs, so before you withdraw your child just make sure that they won't end up in the wrong set for a whole term because of it.

Feenie I predict the 'resits' plans will be... "revised".

Can't see it, much as I would like that to be the case - sample papers have been out for a while now.

multivac, yes it is a lovely school. They use SATs as part of the whole picture of the child, not just SATs (raw scores not just levels) CATs and previous teachers info. They got it right, because instead of sticking my dyslexic DS in average sets for english, they put in him second from top because the SATs showed he excellent comprehension skills, just not good spelling and punctuation

BR I largely object to inaccurate, unhelpful, and ill-thought-through assessment. Seems a waste of everyone's time - and clearly leads to a lot of unnecessary stress, for parents if no one else

I also object when schools - either through poor leadership or external pressure - divert ridiculous amounts of time and resources to 'hitting SATs targets' (e.g. cancelling music, art and PE lessons in order to fit in extra maths/grammar lessons), and/or place unfair pressure on children to perform beyond expectations (e.g. by telling them such lies as "these exams will affect your future").

Luckily, none of this is the case for our sons. So SATs aren't really an issue for us at all. That doesn't stop me caring about schools where the kids are less fortunate.

That's super, bruffin. Doesn't answer my question, though.

feenie out of interest, as a primary teacher, do you know how they will convert the scores into this 100 benchmark for meeting expectations? Will they be taking into account that the current years 5 and 6 have not been studying the new curriculum they will be tested on? Is there a feeling more will not meet expectations this year because of this?

Because, I may be being cynical here, but that means an awful lot will need to resit at secondary (putting pressure on secondary teachers, do they know the curriculum as well as primary teachers??) and also my dd seems to be being set up to 'fail' so that, as future year groups do better the government say they have raised standards.

Bertrand I think there are differences.

1. Private school exams or even state school exams are just internal tests. The teachers know they and the school are not being externally judged on them. So they are less stressed. This then means they don't push their stress on to the children, which certainly seems to happen in some schools wrt y6 SATs.

2. 11+ the parents choose to put their child in for 11+. The parents choose, based hopefully on their child, how much tutoring / extra pressure to do. With SATs all children have to do them, even the less able, or less mature. (And many many more people I suspect are not keen to have 11+ more widely than actually want it).

I actually don't mind the concept of SATs at 11 at all. In principal I like the revision and embedding aspect of it. My DD is learning stuff this year, and will benefit from solidifying technique on certain things.
However I am having to very carefully look after her as she is immature for y6 and her self esteem is fragile and seeing 2/35 on a practice test is more demotivating than motivating for her.
Also, the complex grammar constructs are beyond her at the moment as she is still struggling with the basics. Introducing the complex stuff is just confusing her.

What question?
Yes they were a very accurate assessment of my ds( even with his SEN) and dds ability and yes it is a lovely school, with brilliant pastoral care that look at the whole child, not sure what you are trying to get at.

"BR I largely object to inaccurate, unhelpful, and ill-thought-through assessment. Seems a waste of everyone's time - and clearly leads to a lot of unnecessary stress, for parents if no one else smile"

Absolutely. I'm not a teacher, so obviously I can't really comment on this aspect- and I know things have changed. But when mine did SATs it just seemed like Maths, English and science to me.

And yes, if schools get hysterical about it then that's obviously wrong. I just haven't in my admittedly limited experience come across anyone getting really worried about them except parents.

I know this example is extreme, but at the moment, it feels as though the year 6 have been learning french for six years, only to be told in this final year that the exams are to be in German.

So whereas previous students could see that they were being tested on things they recognised being taught (and there hasn't been a science SAts in quite a while), my daughter is now learning really quite complex grammar and maths very quickly.

The stress on the year 6 teacher, who will be judged on these results, must be massive.

Afaik, they'll collate all the results and then decide where the benchmark is.

Is it such a lovely school, bruffin, that if they realised a child's SATs results weren't an accurate or fair reflection of his/her actual ability, they would adjust both his/her set placement and indeed his/her KS4 targets accordingly?

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

Not me... I'm foreign... and too old. So hence dumb questions.

From what I understand, everyone English in my generation used to sit the 11+, at start of yr6 so vast majority only 10yo, and that seems a lot more stressful than modern SATs because it really was very hard to repair if you blew it, very hard to change to a different academic set, no resits until age 13(?). I've read so many stories of people who blew the 11+ (or NI equivalent), usually because of sudden family problems, and then they ended up doing terrible at a vocational school for 4-6 yrs & only very belatedly got back to an academic track where they belonged 10+ yrs late.

DS never took SATs or CATs but at start of yr8 (move to state school) was put into a top set to be with his friends, I think, and slowly moved around from there. I think school decided to wing it & would do that again. DD (now yr9) has lots of stories of kids who started a subject, yr7, in one set & moved to another set by January of yr7, and kids who moved around sets after that too. I thought that kind of moving around was considered good practice. So SATs not nearly as restrictive & life-limiting as 11+ or GCSE results.

BR Schools do get hysterical about them... because in some cases, grown ups' actual jobs depend on getting the "right" results (and that means, the results that show a dead straight line of progress from Y2 to Y6... even if 25 out of the 30 kids have left and been replaced by others in that time frame). It can be that black and white.