SATS SPAG test is online.....!

[Janefromdowntheroad]

question 2 has me confused

You can't read out the questions in the reading test.

Or certain words in the maths and presumably SPAG tests.

SurvivalGuide - the teachers can't give an answer to a child but they are allowed to ask them to re look at a question and read it aloud to them etc.

Rubbish - you can't read aloud for Reading and you ABSOLUTELY cannot ask them to 'relook' at a question! That would be cheating.

Another child today has told me that the teachers walk around and tap on ones that they should look at again! Or explained words that she didn't know in maths, like 'transformation'.

Which is also cheating. You can't explain the maths vocab in the maths test. It's part of what they are being tested on.

If teachers are cheating by helping students then that will give a false result. No wonder the government are making tests harder if they think the children are achieving this on their own. Shooting themselves in the foot there.

It broke my heart not being able to read out the English reading paper to the child I was with I encourage them to read it out loud themselves but they didn't. Likewise with the questions, I know heating another voice read them would have helped. I read the SPAG paper, which was allowed (just couldn't explain anything) and certain questions had do be read in certain ways. Also the maths papers, which I know was a huge help.

The reading paper is fair enough though.

Suspect the increase in difficulty will just increase the rate of cheating, Fairenuff.

Yes it seems really wrong, doesn't it. They've crammed them so hard at some schools, not for understanding but just rote methods, and then this sort of cheating. I don't really o ow what exactly they teachers do, or what they are allowed, as i only hear it from children who mention it to me, but it all sounds fairly dodgy!

What happens if they get caught. I know the school will get 0%, but do they give a mark to the children.

Seems massively unfair for schools to spend months cramming children for SATs (I'm guessing the overlap between schools that cram and those that cheat is large) and then for the children to get nothing in return because someone else has cheated for them.

The children's results are annulled - this has just happened to a local school over last year's Maths. But baffled as to why it's taken a year.

Teachers who cheat are acting in an incredibly irresponsible way - all the teaching to the exam etc only helps teachers/schools' reputations rather than their pupils.

Teaching to the test isn't cheating. It's completely different.You don't lose your job for it or get prosecuted, for a start.