My sons missing 2 days of SATS

[Bright4880]

Hi , my husband booked a surprise holiday to Florida as our Xmas present and it's just hit me it's his year 6 sats that week and he will miss 2 days , I'm so worried

The writing is not a test and is a teacher assessment based upon numerous pieces which can be done at any time before the July submission

I actually don't believe for one minute that your DH didn't know it was SATs. Nobody has their head that far in the sand to know that they don't happen around that time.
As for Florida being life enriching - that is so funny when you get get the Disney experience in Paris.
You DS will be places in middle sets throughout high school and even if he moves up he will end up moving down again as FFT figures used for league tables have a SATs element in them. I am not sure where any of these schools are where SATs results don't matter ...
your DS will waste a complete year because you want a cheaper holiday to a theme park.

This thread is mad.

Most schools are not slaves to data and totally devoid of sense to the extreme that posters make out with this scaremongering.

FFT has lots of recognised weakness, it would’ve for example predicted Ann Widecome an A* in dance had she taken it. Do you think any school would have continued driving her into the top group at the expense of others through KS4?? It’s use for MFL is laughable.

This will not be the first child without a level in a SATs test...

Don't be ridiculous pieceofpurplesky. Not sitting SATS or not receiving a SATS score will not impact on a child's entire high school experience. They will do CAT tests in the first term of Y7, and teacher assessment will be passed to the secondary school.

Y6 is about much more than a few SATS scores. Or it would be if people like you weren't so fixated on them.

OP, it was a daft thing for your dh to do, and it will no doubt cause a bit of a stir at school but one thing that a holiday in May will definitely not do is ruin your child's secondary education!

SATS are for the primary schools good books. They wont make any difference to secondary school. Its a loada hype. Yr dc will still have a place and if the primary school say it make a difference for streaming- its not true. They will reassess as they go along anyway. Just go enjoy yrselves. Its not worth worrying about.

Of course horse I know nothing. Just been teaching for 20 years and in charge of data for a large English department. Sadly staff aren't judged against teacher assessment they are judged against progress which is based on SATs and cats scores

I can believe that the op has only just found out the sats dates - ds2 is in y6 and we haven’t been told yet other than a vague ‘in the summer term’. When ds1 was at the same school the only way we knew approximately was because they organised a day trip to a theme park for the end of sats - so once that came out after Easter holidays we knew when the sats would have finished by but not the exact dates until much closer. And the trip was a week or two later so it was still a rough guide rather than being a precise marker to the end of the exams.

The secondary ds1 is at uses their own cat tests rather than sats for sets and streams. There is some input from sats for targets but they had to reissue all the most recent targets as the underlying data or something had changed, which meant that the targets were fairly rubbish. Ds has achieved nearly all his end of year targets by mid November based on the software algorithm, as had most of the others to the point that the school had to review and resend out to all the parents (so they all have much harder targets and won’t be tempted to cruise through the year thinking they have already done enough).

I would apologise, explain you dh did this as a lovely surprise and if only they had issued the sats dates (or even just general reminders for May) earlier instead of leaving it until after Xmas, this problem could have easily been avoided.

I might just be grumpy because I am currently fed up with ds2’s school because they are completely rubbish at communicating with parents and children - homework, dates, dress up or charity days, things needed in school... I try to keep on top of it but there is no single place to look, website is often out of date, newsletter doesn’t have everything in it, Facebook and twitter get forgotten...

And if children don't have a SATS score for whatever reason, the statutory requirement is that their primary school passes on teacher assessment in lieu of. And then they will sit CATS tests in the first half term of secondary.

So in no way, shape or form will not having a few SATS marks affect their whole secondary experience.

This 'it's only for the school' attitude really annoys me. The school where the teachers presumably slog their guts out doing their best for your children. Where the Y6 teacher and HT will get hauled over the coals by governors and Ofsted for poor progress data. Where bad results can have an impact on pupil numbers in future years. Being in school for four days is hardly a lot to ask 'for the school', is it? OP, you say you don't owe the school anything because your child was 'let down' by teachers leaving earlier on. Do you think that was the school's choice? Do you think they didn't do everything they possibly could to avoid it and then deal with it? You may have read about massive teacher stress and recruitment problems - partly caused by relentless scrutiny of data, that you're now not helping with...

PieceOfpurplesky - I think you may be in a school bubble if you think all parents know when the sats are, it might be top of your agenda but it certainly isn't for most.

My husband wouldn't know when my daughters sats are. He doesn't know when they are off on school holidays apart from possibly the week before.

Go on holiday and enjoy. The school won't be happy but hey ho, think of the experience in Florida. It will be amazing!

My husband wouldn't know when my daughters sats are. He doesn't know when they are off on school holidays apart from possibly the week before.

I’m really shocked by this. The school I work in bends over backwards to make sure information about the school year is available in a variety of formats, and yet people still expect to be spoon-fed the information it’s their job to access.

How on earth do you book family holidays with one parent being unwilling to take responsibility for being aware of school holidays? Do you not write them on a family calendar or something?

Florida will be life enriching

No. Rome it isn't.

It's just a glorified fun park. The message you are giving your DC is that school doesn't matter that much compare to Disney. Not a good lesson to learn.

@Pieceofpurplesky then you’ll know as a head of English then that the main focus for writing at the end of KS2 is Teacher Assessment, and is not based on a test anymore or completed on any particular day or even one piece of work... 🤷‍♀️
Missing Maths paper 3 (the new reasoning test) won’t affect the English projections

Dds school didn’t take partake in SATs and it’s not held her back in secondary school.

You DS will be places in middle sets throughout high school and even if he moves up he will end up moving down again as FFT figures used for league tables have a SATs element in them
Dd didn't do SATs as her dad died just before they started and she was in shock. Great to know that as well as the trauma of losing her dad the school will make sure she's disadvantaged educationally too.

I couldn’t do it sorry. I would change the dates. If you can afford such a trip surely you can afford the couple of hundred extra to change? How does your son feel? My dd is a very “good” girl and hates breaking rules she would be mortified to be in this position. They are not babies and will have had sats mentioned throughout the year. Sorry I think it’s shit parenting whatever your views on the rights and wrongs of the system.

I know DS would have been worried about missing SATS, not because of pressure put on by the teacher, but because he knew that they were part of Y6 and also he would have been very disappointed to not have had a grade for maths, which was his favourite and best subject

TansyViola I'm sorry to hear about your dd losing her father - how awful for a child. And I hope that you're reassured by the common sensical answers in this thread that she will be in no way disadvantaged at secondary school.

I don't know what pieceofpurplesky agenda is, but ignore it as it's absolute tosh.

Losing a relative or having something else drastic happen to prevent you sitting an exam is on a different planet to choosing to go on a jolly holiday because it’s cheaper. I would be concerned that in the future my dc would be quite pissed off with me for making him miss an important test for a (let’s be honest) pointless reason.

My dd is now Y7. I was surprised to discover how crucial SATS results are in setting. Yes, the secondary school has also done its own tests but SATS played more of a role than I expected.
Your dh may be "a busy man" but "are kids in school on those dates" is not that difficult a concept for other busy people to wrestle with.
Do what you think best for your family.

It's not just the SATS issue though, how long are you away for? If you're going for two weeks, booking a week later could have avoided the SATS issue then might fallen partly into half term.

A couple of days here and there out of school, fair enough but a big family holiday is irresponsible I think. It's not like he's 4, he will be about to start secondary school.

It's hardly a cultural trip full of educational opportunities!

Also, it's really disappointing to see so many people say their husbands/partners would have no idea about SATS/school holidays etc

How do they get away with having zero input in their children's education?

Oh come on @MrsTSwift "I would be concerned that in the future my dc would be quite pissed off with me for making him miss an important test for a (let’s be honest) pointless reason."

This comment actually made me laugh. As if.
Surely no kid as ever turned round later in life and said 'You know mum, I'm really pissed off you took me to Florida when I was 10 and I missed that one SATs test that has had no impact on my life since'

To be fair my DS probably would as he wouldn't like Florida but does like maths! But I accept he may be in the minority. But I know he would worry abut missing the exam at the actual time, and that would take the shine off the holiday for him, wherever we were going.

For those saying they don't know the dates of the exams, they are very easy to google and would have thought that was a common sense thing to do when booking a holiday in May when you have a child in Y6. As a parent with a child in English state primary school you must have been living in a hole for a number of years to not know about SATS