Is it normal for teachers to cheat in SATs?

[MerryMarigold]

I don't personally give a stuff about SATs, but ds1 came home and told me that teachers have told him some of the answers - in all of the tests. Is this normal behaviour? I am shocked, mostly because it is teaching ds1 that cheating in exams is ok. In this case, it is the school cheating.

This just seems really off - and will obviously boost the school's results. On another occasion the HT told my ds1 to 'get a move on' with his paper, which I thought wasn't good either. Ds1 does have slow processing, but I'd rather he was careful and did the questions correctly than storm through the paper. Another time he missed a question as he didn't know the methodology so he moved on (I taught him to do this rather than waste time on something he doesn't know) and he told to go back and do it.

Oh well, it's all over now.

It is quite possibly the HT who has been the originator of the pressure / encouragement to get MiniMarigold (who fits into x data box and is thus IMPORTANT) to obtain as many marks as possible....

The HT will know - I imagine he's told them to do it.

Please report it, if nothing else because if your DS gets sats results he doesn't deserve he will get gcse targets he cannot possibly achieve and will be under intolerable pressure for the next 5 years.

My friend had this last year at her Dds school. Her DD came home after first day and said a ta had sat next to her and made comments throughout about re reading question and check answer etc.

Her DD said it made it harder to concentrate.

My friend is a teacher and emailed school pdq saying if her DD needed a reader etc then this should have been arranged through the proper channels and if she was helped and in a way that made her feel uncomfortable in that days sats she'd be contacting the relevant authority.

Her DD was left alone. She got 5's in all the sats. Her worst result was in that test where she'd not been able to fully concentrate.

Ah, I was looking for this info! I walked past local school after the paper this week as the year 6 children were playing after the test. Another teacher pulled up and called over "how did it go?", and the entire group rushed over yelling, "It was so easy miss, Mr X gave us the answers" (he's the head) "Mr X gave us so much help", etc etc.

As a secondary teacher who is routinely held to account on the basis of those marks, and who's also spent hours with distressed and sobbing children who aren't hitting the targets set because of those results, and tried to explain at parents evenings why children aren't going to reach targets, or are below the level they got at primary, it pisses me right off that the head is putting his career ahead of his students. And that they, and probably their parents, think he's doing them a favour, so no one will hold him to account!

Merry I know your son will want the best possible grade, but his GCSE targets will be set based on this. If they've boosted up his SATs mark you could spend the next 5 years being told he's underachieving. Or, if he meets those targets, that he's working at his level, when actually he's flying ahead. Even if you do t report the school, it might be worth keeping that in mind once he's at secondary.

I would be suprised if the head didn't know. It's one thing to cheat so blatently when nobody can see you. Quite another to be doing it under the heads nose.

I'm really shocked about that. I'm an HLTA and know for a fact that no one in my school would EVER tell a pupil the answer to a question. I didn't even consider that people in other schools would behave like that either.
The school must be desperate to keep their results high but it is doing the children no favours at all and is really unfair, also imagine how a child would feel - they'd feel like the school don't think they're clever enough to answer the questions themselves. Plus when they go to secondary school they will be put in the wrong ability group and then struggle.

There are very strict guidelines when administering SATS tests, we are not even allowed to tell a child what a question means if they don't understand (i.e. We can't reword questions.)

I think you need to tell someone about it but I'm sorry I don't know who.

Thanks all. In terms of affecting ds's predicted GCSE's, I really don't think 1 answer in a test will do that. It's more the principle of making cheating acceptable. 1/2 marks for each child could boost the school's results though. Ds1 didn't even think of it as cheating, because it was teachers doing it! I was so shocked when he told me about the first one that I said, "But that's CHEATING!". He looked so surprised.

In terms of telling the Head. I really wouldn't be surprised if it was coming from him, or he turns a blind eye. However, I want him to know it is not going undetected, and that there is real danger of it coming out from an innocent child. I would hope that he keeps staff in line in the following years. It is just not right and not fair.

Dh is really against me getting involved in this. I think it's my personal sense of injustice and dishonesty which is pushing me to do something.

I do wonder what message this sends to the children.

Precisely, tomorrow.

This is cheating and a dreadful example to set. It will make a mockery of the child's progress from now on.
You absolutely must report it. The teachers involved will most likely be barred from teaching - and quite right.

Absolutely not normal, and makes a mockery of the system for those of us who have sat painfully watching children get answers wrong for the past 4 days.

I've never known this happen.
On another note though I thought secondary schools more or less ignored SATs results and did their own assessments, so I really can't see how it can relate to GCSE targets etc.

The government use SAT results to set GCSE targets regardless of what secondary schools do it's completely out of their control

My son has said the exact same thing this week, teachers pointing at answers with pens and whispering do you maybe want to look at that agIn. Has pissed me off and haven't decided what to do about it yet

I don't know how frequently this happens but I would say that it happens a lot more frequently than most people have would imagine. At the school where I work there used to be dreadful cheating going on at SATs time. Every TA in the school would be sent to the Y6 classroom during SATs week and would sit with one or two children- so effectively every child had an adult right next to them. If the child made a mistake the TA would tap her finger on the question to indicate it needed double checking. If a child tried to change a correct answer then the TA would shake their head and point to the next question. This was common practice for a good 5 years. I also know that as the Y6 teacher and headteacher boxed up the papers at the end of each test, they would read through the writing tests for certain children and would write in missing full stops and commas. Utterly appalling. And to make matters worse, we were named in a local newspaper as having the best SATs results in the area and the headteacher strutted around like she'd achieved something wonderful in her career because the school had these wonderful cheaty results.

Fortunately we have a decent Y6 teacher now who won't allow the headteacher to control the SATs and is 100% against cheating.

Our Y2 teacher cheats every year with the KS1 SATs and when she was in Y1 she cheated during the phonics screening so that she got an almost 100% pass rate even though she had barely taught phonics all year and nearly half the class struggled with reading, the sounds etc. We now have about 50 children on KS2 who need phonics catch up sessions because they don't know the sounds and are still struggling to read. These cheating teachers are doing a real disservice to the children they "help" through cheating.

The reason I think that this happens more frequently than we would imagine is because our feeder secondary school has repeatedly questioned our entire cluster (of 6 primary schools) as to how the SATs papers are marked because the levels were so over inflated. Children were put into the wrong sets and had a horrible time settling into secondary school because of this. This secondary school now reassesses all children when they start because they can't trust the SATs results.

Sorry for the typos. I was in rant mode and my fingers were whizzing all over the place.

Also meant to say I don't blame the TAs at all. It was 100% the headteacher and her Y6 lap dog.

The reason I think that this happens more frequently than we would imagine is because our feeder secondary school has repeatedly questioned our entire cluster (of 6 primary schools) as to how the SATs papers are marked because the levels were so over inflated

How odd - surely both the secondary and you know that they are externally marked?

Totally not normal and utterly unacceptable. It comes under the category of maladministration.

As a school governor I have been in school this week to oversee sats. We take it very seriously, and if other schools are cheating it undermines for all the children and school who are working honestly.

Lots of talk about this in the staff room today. I can imagine the pressure staff are under in year 6, but in our secondary school we are constantly up against impossible targets for year 11 students. Cheating doesn't help the students, it doesn't help us in secondary school, it just makes a joke out of the whole system.

I would just like to know what the kids know, so I know what's left to teach them. Scaled scores and levels tell me nothing. I say screw the SATs, they don't help me do my job, they just make it harder.

I'm considering taking a term off when my kids are in year six and home schooling them just enough so they miss the crazy months of SATs prep and miss all the tests too.

Why didn't you report any of that, RainbowCbasing? You could have done so anonymously?

Hammer, let me know what you do.I think it would be easier if I didn't have 2 other kids in the school. The deputy HT is one of the ones involved.

I can't believe so much cheating goes on 😱 Op, just check first that the answers given weren't just for the practice questions at the beginning of the paper!

My ds has also been doing SATS this week and they have had a teacher telling them pointedly to check specific answers again and even telling them they've got answers wrong.

The kids are shocked and p**ed off that this woman is "cheating".

Should this be reported or is it ok to do this?

How depressing this all is - bet it will be in the Daily Mail next.