Can someone explain the tests controversy to me?

[ISaySteadyOn]

It seems there are two sides: all tests all the time or no tests ever. The truth lies between the two, doesn't it?

I honestly don't quite get it. So could someone give me an objective explanation, please? Thank you!

[mrz]

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[WhoKnowsWhereTheTimeG0es]

I have a Year 5 DC. Under the previous criteria she was above where she should be in reading. Under the new criteria she's just scraping into "meets expectations". Similar for her whole class. The teacher has handled it really well in terms of preserving the DCs self esteem but the parents feel shafted.

When my older DC took his YR 6 SATS last summer his cohort's results were measured in numbers 3/4/5/6, everyone understood these, you got your result, you went off to secondary school. He has SENs and got a 3 in SPAG (4 in the others) which was a pretty good achievement for him and he went off to secondary school with his head held high. My Yr 5 DC (also with SENs, although milder), has had a massive shift in the goalposts during KS2, when she takes hers she will almost certainly not meet the SPAG requirement (probably would also get a 3 in the old system) and will go off to secondary school having achieved "fails to meet requirements" and be made to resit in yr 7. Great.

[jennielou75]

We have been going suffix crazy and did a lesson on would you rather to get some use of or!

[MrsKCastle]

Yes, we've been collecting suffixes and the children get really excited when they find a new 'ness' 'ment' or 'ful' word. But like exclamation sentences, these words do not generally flow naturally in the writing of a 7 year old. They are finding ways to put them in, but it doesn't add to the quality of the writing- it just ends up sounding a bit artificial.

WhoKnows It's frustrating as a parent, isn't it? DD1 is in Y3, she got L3s last year (although I think that was perhaps a little generous) but if she was assessed this year she would struggle to make 'expected'.

[Feenie]

Same here - my class wrote some fabulous recourse t-shirt about a lovely trip which we then ruined by adding exclamation sentences like 'What a sunny day it was!' Or 'How tired I felt!' Spoilt the flow completely. Stupid.

[Feenie]

recounts, not recourse t-shirt. No idea what my Kindle is on this afternoon.

[Feenie]

How can Nicky Morgan make promises like that about children who have even sat the tests yet? She might as well say don't worry, we'll make absolutely sure we rig the data for you. The woman is an imbecile.

[jennielou75]

Ok so how appropriate is this for year 2 and what is the answer!

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

That seems to be exactly what she did say.

I don't think she could have made it any more obvious that the progress measures are going to be completely rigged to tell the story they want.

It's probably a relief that, at the moment, the story isn't 'look how bad these results are. This just shows why we needed to make the testing more rigorous.'.

I'd almost feel sorry for her being stitched up over the academy thing if stuff like this didn't keep happening.

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

The answer is 65.

How appropriate it is for year 2 depends on whether that's from a paper that is aimed at all year 2 or has some questions aimed at testing the most able. I wouldn't expect the most able to have too much problem with it, I've set stuff like that before.

Although it might depend on how much time has been spent teaching problem solving and reasoning as well.

[RaisingSteam]

No, there aren't two sides. From a Y6 parent's POV, and I had an older sibling in Y6 last year, it's this:
2015 SATs were ok, we understood levels, they did not suit everyone but useful benchmark.
2016 SATs: rushed in, much harder and more technical, arguably not age appropriate as explained below, no idea how they will be marked or how marks will be used for/against child or school. Setting children up to fail IMO and biased towards high achieving latin-grammar type schools not the ordinary kid in the street who needs solid everyday basics.

[jennielou75]

According the mark scheme it is not 65 although 5 gave that answer.

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

What answer does the mark scheme give?

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

Unless it's some sort of trick question, I think I must be missing something obvious in the question

[jennielou75]

The mark scheme says 46 as they are supposed to ignore the 19 and just do 63-17. It is aimed at all of the children and is supposed to check there ability to do inverse calculations to check!

[BaboonBottom]

Year 2 tests My views are that this years tests have been rushed in with little preparation for the schools. My kids school were doing the initial ballpark tests so did them earlier than the others, the school were given weeks to prepare for the harder tests, the contents were ummed and erred over for so long that they only had weeks to prepare. So the last few weeks have been crammed with learning the new stuff purely for these tests.

The tests aren't nice short tests, they are long booklets for a 7 year old to sit through. Ofsted judge the school on the performance of its pupils Add the fact that these are 6-7 year olds we are talking about and it all seems hugely wrong. At my children's school the level of parental involvement varies hugely, again this seems wrong to effectively judge the school as this will have a big impact on a 6-7 year old performance.

My children aren't at KS2 yet so my knowledge is limited on that one, but some of the questions I've seen i don't know the answers to and i got an A* in English Lit, English Lang and English Communication GCSE's!!!

[MrsKCastle]

Jennielou that test question is very bizarre. The answer has to be 65- at the beginning, before the first stop there were 2 more people on the train than there are now.

[mrz]

Where's the question from?

[jennielou75]

Scholastic SATs practise papers. On one of their spag tests they describe compound words as suffixes.

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

There's nothing of that complexity in the sample reasoning paper. Even without the bizarre questioning.

Are you sure the mark scheme is correct? The question specifically asks how many are on the train at the beginning, not after the first stop.

The answer can't be 46. They can't ignore the 19 because it's a key part of the question. It would still be an inverse calculation, it's just a two-step one rather than a single step.

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

x-posts. If you know there are mistakes in other resources from them, I'd take this as a mistake then.

[mrz]

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[jennielou75]

I didn't bring the mark scheme home with me but can assure you I remember what it said as we were all annoyed by it!

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

I think the speed the changes were rolled out, 'forced' publishers to produce materials very quickly so there are likely to be errors.

I still think that question is more in line with the 'mastery with greater depth' type stuff from the mastery schemes though. All of the questions I have seen aimed at 'expected' yr 2 children is much simpler, both in terms of the way the question is written and the number of concepts being tested in a question.

[mrz]

It's very similar to question 27 on the sample paper