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

Sats local to me are used in secondary, they follow them through to year 9. I’d cancel for them.

No way would a school class a holiday as extenuating circumstances but bereavement, serious illness etc would be. When my son did his, children with minor ailments such as a cold were encouraged to attend, sat the exam in a separate room, then were collected and taken home.

No of course it is not extenuating circumstances however there will be a procedure that schools follow if a child misses SATs. The same procedure will likely be used in this instance.

I'm not a 2ndary school teacher but as pupils will miss SATs for all kinds of reasons of course they will have a system to allocate children without full results to sets. They don't only have a procedure for students with “acceptable” reasons for missing them and ignore all the others.

This thread is making me feel like a pretty rubbish parent - in the years my DCs did their sats I had no idea when they were until shortly beforehand, I have no clue how they were setted in their secondary schools, their dad (exP) would have been totally ignornat about any of this BUT the one who has now left school managed to have a successful time, get good A levels and a very highly regarded apprenticeship so don't get too hung up on a 4 days in May in year 6.

Except he won't have a teacher assessment result, because he won't miss SATS, he will only miss one paper. So, in effect he will have a SATS result, it will just be much less ( presumably) than he was capable of if he had sat all three papers. So he will have targets for GCSE set from a much lower scaled score than he is capable of. In some schools this will also mean he will be in a lower set, less will be required of him, the secondary will be happy if he achieves the lower target, even if he is capable of a higher result. There are knock on effects.

Justthecover I had a look at the rules, those procedures for extenuating circumstances specifically exclude SATS missed due to family holiday

Regardless of the rules I'd be very surprised if schools don't have ways round this problem, what do they do with generally poor attenders who happen to miss some of the papers? The OP's situation can't possibly be unique in the whole country.

Our secondary bases ALL predictions on year 6 SATS. Even now in year 10, they can't change what he's predicted. It's based on SAT's rather than his recent tests.

They base year 7 initial sets, for maths and English, on their own tests done on the visit days.

But the sat results are always there.

I think you are being very blasé about this. But if you are sure you secondaries don't do what ours do, then so be it.

Oblomov what does your school do if a pupil comes in from abroad or from a Prep school that doesn't sit SATs?

Do they just shrug their shoulders and say they have no clue how the pupil will do at GCSE for the whole 5 years?

If not, and they do in fact have a system for making predictions for pupils who had no opportunity to take SATs, that could presumably also be used for a pupil who had missed their SATs.

@titchy The fine is £60 per parent per SESSION (i.e morning or afternoon - 10 sessions in a week) - NOT £60 per parent per week.

Er no, it isn't. We were fined £120 for one child missing 2 weeks of school for holiday.

If a child doesn't have a SATS score, their primary school will send through teacher assessment, and the secondary school will use this. This is what happens with writing for all children anyway, so it's something that all secondary schools are used to using to predict targets etc.

My dd didn't receive all of her SATS results. She took CATS tests in the first term of Y7 and was placed in the top sets. I have no idea whether she has had her GCSE results 'predicted' yet - as she's only 11, I would sincerely hope not.

Yes the sat results are always (depending on the school 🤷‍♀️) there but they’re just a prediction. One of the very things that is wrong with the education system in this country imo. What if the child has a bad day on the day of the SATs? Feels sick under the pressure to perform? Is worried about something happening at home? Thus gets a much lower grade than they are capable of. Yet these results follow them through secondary school. Would that child then be put in lower sets and left there due to their SATs results? Or if the child becomes more motivated or just suddenly ‘gets it’ in year 8 or 9. Do the school move their predicted grade based on their actually ability or just leave them bored in lower sets?

I don’t teach secondary but I would assume and hope that if it was obvious to a teacher that a child didn’t belong in their set they would be moved. In this case the child will be able to perform to the best of their ability in their gcse’s. The only loser may be the school, if for example they were given a higher predicted grade in year 7 and then left without making as much progress as they ‘ should’ have. Then the teachers would have to answer to this. And so we have stressed teachers. I could go on... basically one SAT test isn’t going to affect your son’s entire future as much as some posters seem to think. He is still capable of getting gcse’s and having a fulfilling life. Just make sure your dh is aware of the gcse timetable 😉

4point, I don't know.

I'm sure they get around it. Most other schools do too I'm sure.

But very few children in ours, come from anywhere else other than their 6 feeder primaries, so I can't imagine it's a huge problem.

I was just saying that the way our school does it, drives me wild, and GCSE predictions is based on SAT's.

In our secondary they change sets occasionally/regularly based on how they are doing at the time/ current grades.

But I'm just saying their actual GCSE prediction still reverts back to predictions based on year 6 SAT's. Which always seemed crazy to me.

4point, as I understand it, if the child do not have Sats data thus no official GCSE target, then the teacher isn't under obligation to make them at certain level to achieve. Better for teachers, I assume, how the child do in GCSE do not really affect them at all?

Sats are 3 days (Monday to Wednesday) I remember - dd did them last year. Really unfair to everyone concerned. I would get him to change it. My daughter's secondary use sats to set them from day 1

They're not - they're Monday to Thursday.

SATs are used as a baseline for all state secondary schools to calculate progress - a measure called 'Progress8', which is published in the DfE performance tables and is part of teh data used by ofsted to make a judgement on the chool.

The progress8 data has a 'coverage' percentage, which shows how many children in that cohort came up without SATs results - so for example I can use that to estimate that a selective school has c. 25% of pupils coming at 11 from private preps, as their progress8coverage is under 75%.

This is why schools use SATs to set GCSE targets: schools are trying to maximise their progress8 by making sure that each child makes the best possible progress from their starting point.

Having no SATs data will probably work out OK if your child is an average-ish achiever with a decent work ethic - they'll be set 'average' targets and as long as they progress along an average trajectory, all will be fine.

If, however, they are in fact a higher achiever with a poor work ethic, having no SATs can cause their underperformance to go undetected - they're doing 'averagely', their results won't count against the school too badly, not a big deal. Faced with e.g. scarce 'extra booster group' resources, or a 'who should be pushed up into the higher set / entered into the higher level exam', the children selected might be those who SHOULD be doing better vs SATs results but aren't, not your son.

i know schools SHOULDN'T be like this. They should be spending their time getting to know the nuances of exactly how your DS ticks, and disregarding all data and targets to ensure he does the best he possibly can. However,. schools are data driven places - think about whether it was a good Ofsted report, or good results, or good position in the league tables that attracted you (and the unit of funding that is your DS) to a particular secondary: that is exactly why schools are data driven - and not having the data can leave you in an 'OK' limbo.

This is a genuine question - why does it matter to a child what their GCSE targets are? It's not going to affect the grade they get, I don't understand why this is such a big deal.

Better for teachers, I assume, how the child do in GCSE do not really affect them at all?

Not if you actually care about a child and work hard with them, only to be told by the deputy head at your performance review that you can't count that work for your professional appraisal as their grades don't count.

One of the (many) reasons I left my old school was because the powers that be didn't care about individual children - it isn't as uncommon as you would hope.

Patti,

I think it is human nature to try a bit harder when given a target to aim for:

• Your target is a C/ you are currently working at a C: oh that's OK, I'm dojng enough, and my teacher will generally be happy with me.

• Your target is a B / you are currently working at a C: oh, I could be doing a bit better, maybe I will do that extra hour tonight, especially as my teacher invited me to the after-school booster session, and my mum was on at me about why my grades were a bit behind on my report..

Don't move your holiday, pretend your son is sick.
They can't prove otherwise and will save you A LOT of hassle

Surely your husband would check school dates before booking a holiday?

Senora,

The thing is that if the OP said that their child was sick, then the rescheduled test would have to be taken within 5 days of the original date - and unless it is a VERY short trip to Florida, that's not going to be possible.

For taking 2 out of 3 papers, the child will get raw marks for the 2 tests, but not an overall scaled score, and that may well be helpful to the secondary.

So the OP has nothing at all to lose for being honest - might as well go into school tomorrow, and explain the circumstances.

The school are very likely to contact the OP if they call in sick, because as a pp said, they will make special arrangements to make sure the dc can come in for the duration of the test and then leave. My dc’s primary would ask that they come in and sit test in separate room and then leave to go home as soon as the test had finished.

It will be very embarrassing and even more stressful for the op I would have thought to be fielding calls from the school on the morning of the journey and also puts pressure on the dc to keep quiet about the holiday both before and after.

Teachers are human and human nature (if I were a teacher) to be pretty hacked off at being lied to. Not that this would be transmitted to the children, but it would make for an awkward atmosphere for the parents.

As a pp has said, some children will be fine with missing sats or other exams. I know that my dc would have been mortified to either have to lie about the holiday or to be missing the tests because they are total rule followers and keen to please their schools. I have a friend who took their 14 year old out for a week to go on a big family holiday and even she ( not an important year test wise and mature enough) was pretty pissed off after the event because she had loads to catch up after. Not that this would be the case with the op’s ds. But he will miss whatever end of sats celebrations the school does.