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

I wouldn't worry it's not GCSE's. But will he get the holiday authorised.

School won't like it but that's their problem. You child will no long term problems regarding this.

Unlikely that you will get fined as it's only two days but if you do get fined then it will still be cheaper than paying out to change holiday.

Secondary schools will base test pupils when they start in any case.

Don't sweat about it. Enjoy your holiday.

Don't ring in sick. The school is not stupid (what a coinidence that he's off in Florida for the next 2 weeks) and its not fair to make your child lie. Plus, as happened to my colleague's child last year, they may still request he comes in and takes the test in isolation.

Well clearly you are better off as a bright student to have high sats and high targets, get into top sets and for the teacher to have an incentive to help/push you. The last thing you want is to get put in bottom sets and only expected to fail.

However i am completely against using sats to predict gcses because this completely disadvantages the youngest in the year. They have 5 years to become proportionally closer in age to classmates but are only expected to do how they did at 11. Not really a surprise that they still continue to do worse rightup to gcse level.
Maybe they need to scale the sats to correct this

People saying it doesn't matter if the child do not have sats data, I really hope you know what you are talking about, and you are 100% right in any school.
I certainly don't know as a parent, and don't want to mess up my dc's education believing it's true.

For posters talking about using teacher assessments to set targets, starting this year, there are to be no reported teacher assessments for Maths (or reading). The only statutory result is the test.

As well as speaking to your child's primary school as a matter of urgency, you might also want to contact the secondary school you think he is most likely to attend to ask them specifically about how they use SATs data and how they use it to set GCSE targets, organise initial sets etc.

Ask for examples of targets and sets for pupils currently in y10 / 11 who arrived without SATs data.

At least then you will have proper information to base your decisions on.

Don't pretend to be I'll, that's terrible advice!

OP, first thing you need to know is how important the SATs results are for the secondary school YOUR child (and nobody else's) will attend. Presumably you have applied for a secondary place, so ring them up and ask what their setting policy is. Do they set purely on the basis of SATs or do they use CAT tests too? How much movement between sets is there, when children appear to exceeding or struggling to meet expectations, or are they quite rigid?
For what it's worth my DC's school seems to pay far more attention to CAT tests than SATS. They know that their feeder primaries are very diverse and the same child in one school might get very different SATs results in another, so they level the playing field. They seem to be testing the kids non-stop so they are often shuffled about from one set to another, which is sometimes annoying because they can move to a better set but a worse teacher, for example, but by and large it works. If the school is like that I can't see that the absence of SATS results is really such a huge issue.

HOWEVER, as a parent I would be more concerned about the social effect on your DS. SATs week is a rite of passage. My DC absolutely loved having a shortish test in the morning and then fun in the afternoons. The post SATS party, the Year 6 trips etc are great memories for both of them. I know Florida is fun too but it isn't going anywhere.
I would also be a bit cautious about telling the school. The Year 6 teachers are under huge pressure over SATs and they won't feel like busting a gut to make sure your DS makes good progress this year if they know he isn't going to be there.

@RedSkyLastNight
They're not expected to coast. That's the point, they have to improve or otherwise the school will have a neutral/negative progress score.

Helix - I can only speak for my own dcs but their targets and sets weren't set in stone the day they started secondary, they moved over the years. It would have be a bad school to allow a top set student in the bottom set not to move up just because the went to Florida a day early in year 6 surely? Does that happen often?

The school are not answerable to CATs or any other test or method they employ. They are singularly accountable to the SATs score. People on here seem to keep repeatedly be pedalling an alternative reality.

Patti,

The thing is, the 'absolute target' needed to get a +ve Progress8 isn't set in stone when a child arrives - because it is a score relative to how a matched cohort perform - BUT a child getting 130 will be expected to do better than a child getting 100. If a child with no score bobs around in the middle of middle sets, nobody will go 'that's odd - they got scores of over 120'; they'll just say 'average child, average targets'.

Schools will obviously pick out clear outliers, and they will be moved into appropriate sets. It's the 'either side of the middle' pupils or 'the ones who could do a bit better with a real push' who might lose out by having nothing to measure their progress against.

Also rightly or wrongly these results seem to pop up throughout secondary so the fact he missed them will be an ongoing “thing” not a one off “thing” easily moved on from.

Im 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.

Our school is pretty good, I have a school calendar linked to my phone. And we usually get on wrote out plus there are updates on internet.

I certainly don't expect to get spoon fed information and neither does my husband.

First section on last message should have been in bold

DD1s in year 7, our secondary do not stream at all in year 7

Auduit, it is unusual not to set at all by ability in Maths, though not that unusual not to set in anything else.

As it is the Maths SAT that the OP's son would be missing, it is particularly important that she contacts the most likely secondary ASAP to find out what that particular school does.

Dds single sex state school sets for pretty much everything from the off. From sats results...

Cantkeepawayforever describes exactly how it works

In all honesty, I would hazard a guess at op's family not being overly academically pushy, or this mistake would never have happened. So long as your expectations/child's abilities are middle of the road, it should work out okay.

Do not say your DS is ill. The school may be able to apply for a timetable variation for illness and if he meets the criteria he could sit the test up to 5 days later, when I assume you will still be in Florida?

As a pp said there are no teacher assessments for English and Maths this year, this is a change from last year.

He will recieve a raw score for papers 1 and 2 of the Maths but no scaled score. His result for Maths will be 'A' absent.

The school won't like it, but that's their problem. Jeez, what happened to parent/school partnership? It's hardly surprising that teachers are leaving the profession in their droves. How depressing.

Pinefresh, do you know what's really depressing? I - as a teacher - didn't even register that comment as even slightly out of the ordinary.

Our school is pretty good, I have a school calendar linked to my phone. And we usually get on wrote out plus there are updates on internet.

And despite this, your husband isn’t aware of school holiday dates until the week before? What’s that about?

I personally don't like the idea of Sats, but it's there, and we have no choice as a parent/dc or teacher/school.
So yeah, I do agree, pinefresh, I really don't like that attitude of "it's school's problem, just do whatever you like and even if you mess up their result, it doesn't matter to your child."
Same people would look at the exam results when they are applying for school, and worry if it isn't good.