SATS and holidays

[Faultymain5]

My daughter will be going into year six. She is second generation and never been 'home'. It is important for her sense of identity to do so I believe. Now I was thinking to go in the six week holidays next year between y6 and y7. But now I'm wondering if Easter would be better.

Then I thought of the Sats. I'd like to know roughly when they'd be doing these and how important to her are they. I wanted to go for 2.5 weeks depending on DD and DS's holidays (inset days etc).

This year they are in week beginning 14th May, last year week beginning 8th May. They are around this time every year. After the actual test week we still do lots of writing to gather more evidence for the writing assessment.

It's also worth looking at what the school does post SATs. Are there special activities, residentials, transition visits to new school. Some areas have pupils moving to their new school for the last week of the summer term. Your DD might find missing some of those upsetting in terms of settling well at secondary.

Whenever you chose to go, enjoy your trip.

SATS are usually in May usually around the middle of May

In our area the results of the SATs are used to put the children in the appropriate set when they start secondary school and are used to set their GCSE target. So I think it is important they give a realistic assessment of your child’s ability

Easter is usually 2 weeks and I think it would be more crucial to be around for the beginning of the summer term if you were going to add a day or two to the Easter holiday so missing the last couple of days.

I personally would go in the summer but it does depend on how important cost is to you and the weather of where you are going.

Schools can be understanding of ‘going home’ but getting good SATs results is even more important to the school.

That is a really good point user1955. My friends ds spend time at his new school in the summer holidays and this would not be a good thing to miss.

OP, you may also need to check what her proposed secondary school do with the SATS data they receive. Some use it for setting in classes, others do their own tests.

Our school does a lot of extra work for SATs and the school is keen on none of the children missing lessons. Saying that I know several started the Easter holidays a couple of days early and mainly missed an Easter Egg hunt, assembly and a church service.

Def do not prolong the Easter holidays and I wouldn’t want DD to miss anything after SATs. Our school does a residential in June, all work is done in relation to it. They also prepare a great theatre show which will take around 4 weeks to set up and in general the school does lots of events in Summer term.

We are non Brits and I always found the normal school holidays enough time to take DD to see her family and our home country. While flights are eye watering expensive even to Europe that’s life and budgeted in.

Thanks I have to factor in her DBs timetable too. so not just about cost I'm afraid. Hard to plan when not sure what school she'll get into as well.

I don't as a rule take kids out of school so 2.5 weeks are reliant on the inset days they put around the holidays.

The primary school is really good about letting us know well in advance.