If parents don't agree with SATs for 7 year olds, and teachers don't, and heads don't ...

[Twiglett]

then why do we still have them?

I thought they'd abolished them for Y2.

Because the halfwits who run the departmant of education are not frigging teachers, and have never been teachers, but think that they know what teaching and schools are all about, because they went to them as kids!

This is just one of a series of stupid, ill thought out, half baked, impractical policies that litter the field of education like rotting carcases after a battle..

nope

abolished in scotland and wales

still around in England

You don't have to do them in many private schools, thank goodness. Lots of normal tests though but I think they seem easier, manageable and beneficial.

OK can we have a mumsnet campaign to abolish them?

I have written to my MP using this site write to them where you can get your own MP's details by entering your postcode

this is my letter if its any help to anyone else

"I am truly concerned that the Government has failed to address the issues of SATs in Primary Schools in England and was wondering whether you could explain their argument to me.

My understanding is that these tests have been abolished in Scotland and Wales; that the NUT and Association of Head-Teachers are opposed to them; that they cause undue stress and anxiety for children and parents and that they unduly focus our children on 3 core subjects rather than providing a rounded education. My understanding is that this is all to produce league tables which any right-thinking parent pays scant attention to.

I should very much like to understand the position of the Government and future plans with regards to SATs as well as to make clear my total opposition to their continuance.

I speak as a School Governor and as a voter and look forward to your earliest response."

why do teachers hate them so much . I know there is loads of extra work involved.

It's a bit like the NC insistence on the literacy hour and numeracy hour.

I help out in DS3's class on a Friday morning and was chatting to his teacher yesterday. She was explaining what we will be doing next week (when I'm there) and how it would be organised. Basically for the first hour the children do 3 different topics in groups of about 8, each group doing a different topic and then moving on the next, etc. We were agreeing that the children seemed much more focussed and less tired at the end of that sort of routine than after an hour of doing one subject. The teacher was saying that the insistence on the literacy and numeracy hours completely ignored the attention spans and the effect that this had on the children.

So who are the people who dream up these schemes? Are they so far removed from actual teaching that they've forgotten how to deal with their basic material, the children?

I think teachers hate them because they put undue stress on the children and their parents, they destroy the ability to teach a wide curriculum, they are ill conceived and a range of working assessments done by teachers, who are after all professionals, shoudl be more than adequate ..

I heard that 'literacy hour' and 'numeracy hour' are guidelines and shouldn't be taken literally .. ie you can work both into the teaching of any subject .. throughout the whole curriculum

don't think anyone sets any store by them except perhaps a handful of pushy parents

My understanding is that yr2 Sats are no longer compulsory but schools can still set them but mark in-house. They still have them so that they are able to show a 'value-added' percentage after yr6 Sats. Total nonsense really but given the obsession with league tables you can hardly blame a school for trying to do well with value-added.(Except of course, that there is the temptation not to mark the kids too high at yr2 so that the value added at yr6 is better

yes idelmum, that's what I was told at parents evening this. bUT they were telling me not to worry about ds's results in year 6 as they were meaningless - which implies that they don't care about them either anymore.

At parents' evening last week ds1's teacher told me that he, and a few others, were picked out that week to sit a past year 2 SATS paper. He is in year 1 and is still only 5.

She was embarrassed about it, she didn't agree with it but it was out of her hands. Honestly, the world has gone mad.

I don't know much about SATS. Children in private schools are tested all the time. Is it the testing parents in the state sector object to or is it the time taken preparing for fairly pointless tests which are badly designed and take a lot more work than your standard end of term exams or weekly spelling tests or whatever?

its the latter xenia .. and they're only tested on literacy, numeracy and science which throws other curriculum topics into a pale shadow of insignificance .. music, ICT, history, geography, creativity, modern foreign languages etc don't exist on them

It's also the cramming for the SATs subjects in year 6 to the exclusion of other subjects. E.G. PE was suspended until after SATs at our primary so they could concentrate on SATs subjects.

My children's end of term exams at private school were I think a maths paper and an English paper. That's what you'd expect but that doesn't mean they don't do geography and science etc. I don't see why the fact there will be tests in some subjects means things are hard. Do teachers put far too much effort into preparing for the tests or are the tests too hard? I know there are massive problems with them and most private schools choose not to bother with them so obviously they must be some kind of huge stressful exercise for some reason.

Surely you could do a simple test, no preparation, just your normal reading every day at school, maths etc and just do a test on one day without it being a big thing at all. I can see it doesn't seem to work like that in practice though.

My understanding is that that's the way the SATs should work but because of the league tables being based on the results the schools do everything in their power to ensure good SATs results to give the school a good position in the tables.

I don't actually object to 'testing' at Yr 6, it's part of life sadly; but I hate yr2 stas - no matter how much school bleats on about ''the kids don't know they're being tested '' and ''the children don't know how well each other have done'' belive me, at my school, the parents hype the kids up...the kids know exactly when they've been tested and even how well each other have done ultimately.

So the teachers or headmistresses make the tests into what they have become. That's a huge shame. Testing children is important and having a test against a national standard is a good idea which my children don't get until they do GCSE (or I suppose 11+ entrance exams).

All the SATS should mean is that schools teach maths and English properly as they should anyway. Now that the league tables are all complex and value added anyway do the positions matter much anyway?

I don't see the big problem with them really. They mean nothing apart from a to a few parents who like to get themselves worked up and worried about them.
When ds1 did them a couple of years ago he actually enjoyed them! They were given colourful booklets instead of boring photocopies - they didn't bother him in the slightest.
Ds2 has them this year and he won't really notice. We won't say anything to him about it - I mean they have spelling tests all the time. Ds2 has left the village school (only up to end of yr 3). He always seems to be having a test of some sort.

DD1 id doing them this year does anyone know when they are? So far there has been no mention from school apart from don't go o holiday , so AFAIK they haven't been pracising or anything (though think Dd1 will like it anyway )

KS3 is 2nd week of May, KS2 is 3rd week - KS1 must be 1st week as 4th week is half term.

How come Wales and Scotland keep getting more and more social and financial benefits and England doesn't? Who pays, exactly?