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?

League tables werent introduced until the 90s

Sorry mrz I wasn't at all clear. I meant to say 'I know league tables weren't around when SATs were introduced. SATs were introduced as part etc.'

Mea culpa.

Why do some schools not have meetings/workshops/homework or even letter home to parents?
Sounds like this is the norm but ds school doesn't (but is definitely doing them)

National Curriculum tests were introduced in Year 2 following the introduction of a National Curriculum (KS2 & 3 tests followed) and yes it was inevitable that governments would eventually use the data for their own purposes so league tables followed. All of that doesn't negate that the real purpose of assessment has the pupil at its heart ( the rest are unfortunate side effects)

Yes, mrz, that's why I said that teachers had been doing summative assessment long before the introduction of SATs. And will continue to do so long after they have been abolished.

SATs are, simply, not good summative assessment. They don't have the pupil at heart.

Here's something shocking: GCSEs aren't good summative assessment, either...

No that isn't what you said unless you are now saying that the summative tests used before SATs were introduced were SATs

Prior to the introduction of the SATs there wasn't a nationally standardised summative assessment ... Schools had been free to teach whatever they wanted and to use any kind of assessment they wanted (or indeed not to use any).

The tests aren't perfect far from it but they are used for the child as much as for the school. The results will be used by the government to set GCSE targets (whether the secondary school uses a hundred tests in Y7 they only inform internally ) if the child attends a state maintained secondary school. They are the official data which will be passed on regardless.

uhoh1973 grammar schools do not use the 11 plus for anything other than selecting their intake. I'm not aware of any grammar schools that use the 11 plus for setting targets and predictions. However, some state secondary schools do use SAT results for this.

I didn't say there was 'nationally standardised' summative assessment. I said there was summative assessment. Teachers finding out what kids know, and understand.

There's no doubt that Baker's reforms attempted to address some very real problems in schools at the time - including a lack of consistently high standards. But the NC tests were always to assess teaching. Not children.

And the targets that the government sets for GCSEs are for the school, not the child. It doesn't matter if one particular child underachieves, as long as another overachieves - because government targets are about overall percentages.

The very fact that SATs targets insist on a straight line of progress for Cohort A in Y2, right through to Y6 - even if none of the actual children who were there in Y2 are still at the school by the end of the process - should be enough to indicate that really, SATs don't have the needs of real children at the heart of them.

mrz they are used for the child as much as for the school.

Could you expand on this?

I genuinely see no value in the SATs for my DCs. My DCs school cap the assessments i.e. no child is assessed above a level 3 in year 2, no child is assessed above a level 4 in years 3 & 4 and no child is assessed above a level 5 in year 5. What exactly are the SATs results supposed to do for my DCs.

To reiterate, I live in an 11 plus area. The amount of private tuiton undertake in the area makes it impossible to identify the quality of teaching at any of the local primary schools. Whilst I appreciate that the 11 plus is not widespread, how is any distinction made between areas like Bucks and Kent and other non 11 plus areas?

I know you didnt but I did

Mum if your child's school capped levels then I'm afraid that's a flaw in the school not in the assessment.
Key Stage 2 tests have always been marked externally meaning that schools couldn't manipulate the results and reflected what the child could do on a given day with a given set of questions. Most schools use the results to analyse the questions children answer incorrectly as this indicates gaps in the child's knowledge ...useful for planning
As you know the results are used by the government to predict and set GCSE targets in secondary school ...these are the official expectations regardless of tests individual schools set
Whether we agree with the system or not it's the one we are stuck with and we need to work with it for the benefit of the child.

mrz - Mum if your child's school capped levels then I'm afraid that's a flaw in the school not in the assessment.

No it's not. Outside years 2 and 6 SATs are optional. The school doesn't have to administer them at all let alone cap them. How many primary schools do you know of that assess for levels 7 or above?

Key Stage 2 tests have always been marked externally meaning that schools couldn't manipulate the results and reflected what the child could do on a given day with a given set of questions.

So having the papers marked externally will identify how much has been taught at school and how much has been taught by a private tutor or parents?

Whether we agree with the system or not it's the one we are stuck with and we need to work with it for the benefit of the child.

As previously asked, what exactly is the benefit to the child?

"Whether we agree with the system or not it's the one we are stuck with and we need to work with it for the benefit of the child."

This is very different from what you were insisting earlier.

Mum the National Curriculum tests (SATs) were introduced to assess children's progress across a key stage some schools bought in tests to use in other year groups to provide parents with levels. Levels were never intended to be used that way but some schools felt under pressure from parents. The whole thing became a mess ...with sub levels (that technically never existed in the old national curriculum ) and stupid expectations for linear progress that didn't reflect the actual expectations of the curriculum.
I'm afraid you can't blame capping expectations on anyone but the school ...no one told them they coukd to award higher levels if a child was wirking at that level. It was down to the school.

No multivac it isn't different at all. The assessment we have is useful for the child if we work with what we've got.

That doesn't make any sense mrz, when 'what we've got' is excess pressure on schools to hit arbitrary targets, regardless of what individual pupils are capable of.

And it is different from what you were saying earlier, which was that SATs were 'for the child', and had the child 'at the heart'. They aren't. They don't.

That doesn't mean that summative assessment is a bad thing. Just that SATs are bad summative assessment.

I'm afraid I will have to disagree with you. The pressure on schools is from league tables not from the tests which used for the purpose first intended is a useful tool.

Of course in May we have a whole new and unknown system to argue about and tests for 11 year olds on a curriculum they have followed for less than two years and who knows what 2017 will bring.

I'm more than happy to disagree with you. I have a pretty good overview.

As a parent, I disagree with you too multivac.
From 'lived experience'- DD at small State Primary in a deprived area- I do believe that SAT's are for the benefit of the child.
That said, I can understand how others ,speaking from other standpoints, may consider that summative assesments in any form are purely for the schools' benefit in league tables.
Thing is, which standpoint is more beneficial for the child, me wonders...

Its not benefiting my child. ALready (years before yr6) other subjects are being squeezed out of the curriculum and a focus on inane/made up grammar has become the overarching goal in their studies.

mrz Really? Personally I place more value on feedback from parents/teachers at the secondary schools I am considering along with the information provided in the DfE performance tables: www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/schools/performance/school.pl?urn=136899

So OFSTED don't give a toss if every child in your yr 6 achieves L3 in their yr 6 SATs?

To say again - I have visited 9 local secondary schools and not a single one of them has suggested that SATs are a reliable way of predicting a DCs academic performance. Every single one of them conducts their own assessments at the beginning of yr 7. Why the hell would they need to do this if SATs were of any use in identifying and predicting against academic performance?

Why do grammar schools and selective secondary schools use 11 plus exams if SATs are an accurate way or determining what a DC has learned and how they will perform academically in the future?

Do you really think that schools like QEB (www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/schools/performance/school.pl?urn=136899) give a toss that a DC has a SATs level 6 in Maths? Do you really think that this would be a credible way of identifying which children they should offer a place to as, after all, they are going to get an A/A* at GCSE.

ProggyMat I do believe that SAT's are for the benefit of the child. why?

mrz The assessment we have is useful for the child Please could you elaborate on this.

Is that the fault of the test Tea or the school or league tables or parents who only want their child to attend an outstanding school with good SAT results?

Mum visit any junior school and they will moan about the levels passed on from the infants ...just as secondaries moan about primary levels.
I remember my own children spending three (yes three) years of secondary repeating things they'd mastered in primary because their teachers didn't believe SATs results. Their internal tests only assessed what they'd been taught so it wasn't picked up until KS3 SATs when teachers were surprised by the results!