The reading test in particular was quite unfair. It was very challenging, particularly for children who don't speak English as their first language and put them at a disadvantage. For this reason, I wouldn't want parents to be making their own assumptions about the paper without a professional conversation about my own opinions of it!! Parents also don't know how the scaled scores work and there could be lots of misconceptions without having that chat alongside the teacher.
You see, this is the kind of attitude that I find patronising; it makes me cross. I was raised bilingually, am raising bilingual children and I have educated myself in the matter, and I would wager that I understand the specific issues involved better than 99% of primary school teachers. Also, MY bilingual children are not 'the average' bilingual children (none are); and I know the PARTICULAR issues that they have better even than specialists on bilingualism do.
So actually yes I might want to discuss such an English/reading test with you, but in order for you to learn from me, rather than in order for you to explain my child with their specific situation regarding bilingualism to me.
Also, stating that parents don't know how scaled scores work is condescending. It is actually easy to find out how they work, it took me all of five minutes.
I appreciate that not all parents are very involved with their children's education. But what you are saying is that because for SOME parents it is absolutely important to have that meeting with the teacher alongside, you won't let ANY parent have e.g. a copy of SATS papers; that they may comb through it with a much finer-toothed comb than you could, in their own time, and applying their own specific expertise. And perhaps reach extremely helpful conclusions that they could then share with you and would enable you to teach them better. Or that they could use to support their children better at home.
SATS papers inform teacher assessments, along with all the other work the children do throughout the year. Has anyone considered that SATS papers might also inform parent assessments - along with all the other work a parent has done with their child throughout the year?
Schools keep on about parent-school partnerships and information sharing and such. In truth they won't let me see my child's work for fear that I might misinterpret something. When in fact some parents are highly educated; in their own children's specific issues (be it hearing loss, their child's particular expression of autism, bilingualism, giftedness, ...), in pedagogy, in subject matters - sometimes more educated and/or more experienced than their children's teachers. But all too often schools refuse to make use of that expertise.
So OP, yes I can see good reasons for wanting to not just see, but be able to spend some time carefully going through my child's SATS papers. In my case I could use them for example to detect phrasings deriving from our other language that my child transposed into English. The teacher would not be able to do that as she has zero notion of our other language. Or I could identify why certain questions caused difficulty, due to our specific cultural background. I could then use this to help my child make progress with such issues caused by our specific case of bilingualism. These are things that won't be addressed at school, as long as my child's English is good enough; so school won't ever help him progress with this. I would share my findings with the teacher if they were interested; most likely they wouldn't be. Most schools are only interested in aspects of bilingualism if a child is 'behind' in English. They often don't understand that even a child whose English is as good as their peers', can have specific issues regarding bilingualism that they need to work through. And even if they do understand this, they rarely have the resources to support an able child with something that is not precisely in the curriculum. (E.g. understanding our other language's phonetic code would help my child in multiple ways, including in his English; but I don't expect school to support him in learning our other language.)
If school won't share my child's work with me (and SATS papers are just one instance of their work), then I have to make my child do more work at home in order to be able to make such assessments. So should I set them SATS papers at home? I'd much rather just analyse the SATS papers they have already sat! They are at school for the best waking hours of their days, I do not wish to make them do more work at home, simply because school won't share their school work with me.