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?

it 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
DS only ever set adjustment was in MFL as his sets were right for him all the way through school.
DD went up and down in maths as she was top set material, but lacked confidence, so thrived at the top of second set but lost confidence if she was in top set.
As for as an accurate assessement of KS4, yes they are accurate of what they are/were capable of.

BertrandRussell ... I don't understand why people get so very worked up about SATs... 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.

For me, this highlights one of the main reasons why SATs are a problem for some parents.

I think SATs have become a useless measurement tool designed to justify the constant tinkering with the state education system and a means to win votes.

It is impossible to identify how much a child’s academic performance can be attributed to a school and the quality of teaching there within. Simply Google SATs tuition to see how much demand has grown and this doesn't even come close to identifying how much extra tuition parents are giving their children.

During a day tour of one of the secondary schools the HM stated that they conducted their own academic assessments at the start of year 7 as the SATs results were too unreliable. He said that a child coming to them with a level 5 from one school, in some cases, would not come close to a level 5 from another school.

I will also add that SATs give no allowances for SEN. It would appear that a fair number of children are not diagnosed with SEN until secondary school. With this in mind, how accurate can their SATs results be in predicting their academic performance or even the quality of teaching at a primary school?

I will also add that SATs give no allowances for SEN.

again it showed up my ds sen for what it was and the school set him accurately because of those and CATs results (which didnt show up his SEN)

Not remotely interested in sats here.

I'm interested in the 11 plus because it's kill or be killed round here.

But that's all I really bother about.

"I'm interested in the 11 plus because it's kill or be killed round here."

What on earth does that mean?

Basically Bertrand it means that I'm concerned about my child passing his 11 plus. If he doesn't he is likely to be very unhappy in secondary school.

It's a long and complicated story involving autism and special facilities and bus journeys, but I expect you can surmise.

I already have one child at secondary who didn't pass, and is very happy. This one's different.

I hate the 11 plus system.

bruffin, I didn't ask whether your child's results/predictions were accurate. I wouldn't expect you to extrapolate from that whether the tests are, as a whole, remotely accurate - or helpful - either.

I'm delighted it all worked out so well for your family. I'm afraid that for many others, it is not such a rosy picture.

Oh, right. So "kill or be killed round here" means "it's very important in my specific set of circumstances"

No, it doesn't. It means that you either pass and end up at a nice school, or you don't pass and you end up at a less nice school where you are likely to get trodden on if you aren't totally on top of things socially.

Other people often get super expensive tuition and so on in order to make sure they have an advantage, which is something I don't do mainly on principle.

It is a system of winners and losers. Are you trying to make a point?

bruffin again it showed up my ds sen for what it was and the school set him accurately because of those and CATs results (which didnt show up his SEN)

bruffin, I'm not sure if I understand you correctly but are you saying that you were able to determine that your DC had SEN as a result of their SATs results? If you are I can assure you that it is highly unusual as the tests are in no way designed to assess underlying abilities.

Yes, I am trying to make a point. I hate the 11+ system with a passion, but representing it as "kill or be killed" makes people even more irrationally terrified of the alternative to grammar schools, and entrenches the system even more. Middle class people are scared enough of the sort of children who don't pass the 11+ without perpetuating the myth that their child is going to get "trampled underfoot" "sink without trace" or "be killed" if they end up there.

oh ffs why can't people use metaphors, point of metaphors is they aren't meant to be taken literally.

Mumtryingherbest

yes it did because of the almost 2 level difference between his writing and reading/comprehension results ie scrape level 4 by one point for writing and high level 5 for the comprehension test, Maths and Science (no level 6s then). I have been told uneven CATs should show this up but DS Cats were very even.

bruffin I think it far more likely that the SATs results indicated a possiblity of SEN rather than indentified that your DC had SEN.

I assume that the school then arranged a formal SEN assessment, a copy of which will have been given to your DCs secondary school to help them identify ways to support your DC in realising their academic potential? I very much doubt the SATs results alone would have given the secondary school sufficient information to enable them to do this. surely?

If you think SATs give an accurate indication as to future performance, have you not wondered why the school did not pick up on the 2 level difference at the end of year 2?

I didnt say the sats results identified sen. DS never had a formal assessment until he was in year 10 when they needed it for extra time for his gcses. There was not a 2 level difference at KS1, it was as he matured the difference became more apparent, although in the early days he did struggle with reading, but at 7 "got" reading.

I didnt say that the results were solely used for him to be put on sen register,I said the SATs showed /indicated) that he had an SEN.
He was on sen register probably from about year 4, when the 2 level difference began to show up ie he wrote a story which teacher wanted to give a level 4 but could only give level 2 because of spelling, punctuation etc. Year 5 he started to get 1 to 1 because of the obvious difference in his abilities. He is a very bright boy and it was obvious there was something wrong. The fact he was on the sen register was not passed onto secondary because of his level 4 in writing, but secondary school put him back on it. I found that out later.
He was on the sen register at secondary all the way from yr7 , unfortunately there was a change in the system and his extra time was taken away the week before his A2s.

What has any of that got to do with your claim that SATs are "useful" for children, bruffin?

I give up! id o hope you have nothing to do with education multivac!

Why, bruffin?

I think the fact that Key Stage 2 tests SATs are used to create league tables misleads people into believing they are just for schools.
The purpose of summative assessment (yes SATs are summarise assessment) is to show what individual children have learnt and to identify any gaps in their knowledge so the next teacher can plan to meet their learning needs. Whether we like it or not the government have chosen to use the data from this assessment for their own purposes but that doesn't mean that the real purpose is valueless.

mrz Summative assessment isn't of much use, though, if it is preceded by cramming, private tutoring and general teaching to the test, is it?

It isn't of much use if schools are threatened with forced academisation, pay freezes and/or job losses unless the results fit some arbitrary standard decided in Whitehall (60% benchmark one year, 85% the next?)

It isn't of much use, in short, if it doesn't actually assess what children genuinely know and understand.

And the government hasn't 'chosen to use the data from this assessment for its own purposes' - this specific style of assessment was only introduced so it could have some data to play with in the first place.

Teachers were doing accurate, fair useful and regular summative assessment long before SATs were introduced.

I'm sorry bruffin but I have to agree with multivac. Your last post makes it clear that the year 6 SATs had nothing to do with identifying that your DS has SEN as the issue had already been identified.

However, you have highlighted one reason why SATs are not a useful tool in predicting future academic performance - "There was not a 2 level difference at KS1, it was as he matured the difference became more apparent". This is also one of the main reasons that many people are identified as having SEN in secondary school.

I didnt say that the results were solely used for him to be put on sen register Neither did I.

Untrue multivac when it was first introduced there were no league tables

They are a measure of the school. It is not important for the individual child unless someone is going to use the results? As far as I can see no one is using them for children? Private schools have their own exams and grammar schools have the 11+.

I didn't say they were. But they were introduced as part of Kenneth Baker's massive educational reforms of the 80s, and very much as a way of keeping tabs on teaching standards. League tables were an inevitability, really...