What do they mean by this?

[UserX]

Have just had a message from the school’s automated system:

Polite Request:
Please can youand/or tutorsnot use past SATs papers with your children as the school uses them for assessments.

Have just about had it now. DD is having tutoring but for 11+ not SATS. Loads of kids at the school are being tutored as school tends to teach toward the middle and is vocally anti 11+. Their SATS prep is fairly useless for anyone in the top set as well.

Surely if parents want to give their DC a bit of extra help the school should welcome it or at least stay out of it? I have older DC so have witnessed the useless and stressful SATS prep first hand, am really not surprised parents are supplementing especially as most secondaries here use the scores for setting.

Doesn’t this mean “do not use actual past papers otherwise this will not give a fair picture if your child has done this before?”

It's quite simple. School will be using the past papers in class and if a child has already been tutored or prepped through that paper then the paper is pointless.

I do have to laugh at people saying 'well they should know weaknesses for an exam in may. Why do they need that paper so late'.
I'm still giving my y11s mock questions to identify weaknesses. Their knowledge is good but their exam technique is weak. In many other subjects they are only just at thr end of the course. It makes a huge amount of sense to do a range of mock papers. I can't see why Y6 would be any different.

I don't understand how you interpret this to mean that they don't want parents to organise tutoring? It seems to me to be perfectly sensible to ask that people simply avoid using past SATs papers.

Doesn’t this mean “do not use actual past papers otherwise this will not give a fair picture if your child has done this before?”

Yes, it means exactly that. But some parents might read it as 'this is how I can get my DC to do better in school assessments' and it therefore have the perverse effect of leading some parents to to precisely that. As they might care more about DC's apparent performance in there here and now, than they do about a SATS result which won't mean much in the long run.

What I find a little bit weird about it (although not for 10 year olds to be fair - but then I took the 11+ blind - not even a practise paper 30 years ago) is that by GCSE, we were expected to have gone and found these past papers/papers from other boards ourselves to revise with.

TBH, it's a scrabble for resource isn't it - there's a resource out there (the past papers) and the school wants to use them rather than buy others/compile their own, and so do the parents/tutors. One could argue that it's supporting the school funds by having the tutors compile/buy papers rather than making the school do it.

I don't like 'polite notice' though. It's like those signs people put up when they have no leg to stand on legally, but don't want you to park in front of their house, hoping that other people mis-read it as 'police notice'

It is a bit pointless taking the same paper twice in your preparation - that is all this is aimed at saying

It's more than that. Our school does practice run test like skeletons. If the children has already done that paper, whole point of doing practice test is ruined. And doing the test at home, and with the same test condition at school is totally different.

What I don't get is this (seeming) obsession with 'past papers'. Especially at primary age. We're not talking about mock GCSEs here.

Yes, schools should do a practice run with exam conditions.

1. So that children know what to expect in terms of what the papers look like (thick booklet but only one question per page, so that booklet looks like more than it actually is? Dense text leading you to misjudge how much time you have left, thinking 'oh it's only one more page' but there are 30% of marks on that last page?')
2. So that children who struggle with exam conditions can be identified and ways found to support them.
3. So that children know what to expect in terms of exam conditions.
4. Maybe also so that children can practise their time management and exam technique that they might have been taught. Though this practice can be enabled differently too.

I fail to see the point in using 'past papers' for revision/teaching/tutoring though. Surely you should work on the actual 'topics' that need to be mastered. Within the 'topics', show the child the various types of questions that might come up.

This was KS1 SATS so doubly absurd: We kept getting 'past papers' home as homework. So not for assessment, not for exam technique, time management, exam conditions. No, it was meant for improving the children's abilities.
So first time, DS went through the questions and I noticed that he struggled with something e.g. the one question in the paper on 'fractions'. Surely that should mean he should do some 'revision' on fractions, either at school or at home? Nope, all that is provided from school is another 'past paper'. So DS goes through a whole paper full of 'easy' questions (learning that it is a bit boring, and not worth concentrating) in order to get ONE question with which to practise his weak spot.
Conversely, the kids that struggled with many topics, would probably have improved much more by 'revising' each topic, one at a time, until fairly solid, rather than doing one or two questions on each topic and keeping on not getting them.

Weighing the pig won't make it fatter.

Fine if you use your weighing results, analyse them, and work out what needs to change in the pig's diet. (In other words, work out what a child needs to improve on, and provide them with targetted exercises). Pretty useless if you just put the pig on the scale again a week later (give the child another past paper).

Or is there something about doing 'past papers' that I do not understand? (Honest question!)

It seems to me that actually (even if not thus intended), school is asking you to revise/tutor more effectively, by using better methods than simply going over past papers. Sound advice IMO.

Or is there something about doing 'past papers' that I do not understand? (Honest question!)
Time and a place thing (but anything I'm about to say is from a secondary perspective).
Too much testing and not enough teaching is a ridiculous waste of everyone's time.
Weighing a pig doesn't make it fatter.
Mock papers can be useful for timings (our exam is 2h15mins!!)
Replicating exam conditions can actually get the best out of pupils vs 'oh we're doing an essay in class'.
It's good to use them diagnostically but I find a closed book knowledge quiz much better for that and quicker ti mark.
If you're going to do a mock question actually plan intervention before it.
Death by mock questions doesn't improve grades. All it does is embed habits. If you don' change the habits then all you do is solidify errors.

I much prefer planning literature essays, recall revision, speed writing short extracts of answers with my gcse classes. Plus it also teaches them how to revise effectively at home.

I think ks1 and ks2 is quite different, brilliotic.
KS1 sats are not timed, results are only a part of TA, and school will be trying it to make it less special thing as as possible. So, doing past papers and getting familiar with test booklet and question types may be a good thing. Though I agree, they should use the info to help children with different weakness.

I'm a TA in Y6, we did a run through of the test week last week. We didn't do it to identify strengths and weaknesses, we already know those. We did it so the children would know what the week would be like. To see the what the paper looks like, what they will have on their desks, the types of questions they'll be asked, the timings. Even the different arrangement of the tables on the Monday caused a fuss.
We used the 2016 papers, if any children had had to do those more than once I'd feel very sorry for them.