Y6 SATs - am I failing dd?

[4strings]

I suspect I’m being ridiculous, but dd’s school is full of very competitive parents who push and push and push their dc.

Dd1 has, in comparison to some of her classmates, done very little in the way of SATs prep. She’s done a good chunk of the books we bought through school, does her homework etc (including that which is set over holidays) but I haven’t been pushing more regular homework/revision etc. It seems utterly pointless. We still don’t know where she’s going for y7. School A sets initially on SATs; School B (her first choice) is independent and doesn’t even do them. (the school issue is complex and not a simple matter of passing the 11+)

I’ve had a few raised eyebrows/sharp intakes of breath when I admit to not pushing my 11 to breaking point as seems to be prevalent in her class.

Am I wrong in this approach? Dd is likely to do well.

You standard comment now is, I am blessed with an intelligent child who is self motivated, I refuse to put pressure on her, when she is already hitting the grades needed.

You are right in your approach.

We guided DS and asked him to do his best. We went through some extra examples with some things he struggled with but that was all. Thing is if you push them, one they may just fall apart, or they may get over inflated results as you have taught them for the test, they then get put in the higher sets in Y7 which might not be the right place for them

Of course you're right, but I can see how peer pressure from other parents might make you doubt yourself.

Just nod and smile when people mention what they're doing with their child. Ditto when people ask 'how it went?'. Ditto when people talk about their children's scores etc etc.

Hope that you find out about secondaries soon - that in itself sounds more stressful.

I have done precisely no SATs revision with my Y6 dd, and school has not set her any. I’m in the lucky position that she will do well, and it won’t affect her next school, so I suppose it’s easy for me to be relaxed about it.

The secondary school thing is indeed stressful. We might not even get that resolved until June (argh).

I find the different approaches of schools interesting. Ours used to be very low key but seem to have gone crazy. They issued a six page revision timetable in September. Dd said they hadn’t covered a lot of it yet and got incredibly upset. I binned the timetable. Cue from her classmates’ parents.

SATs are bollocks. I intend to keep DS away from as much of the craziness that Yr 6 appears to have become, and if I never hear him use the phrase 'fronted adverbial' when writing something, I'll be happy.

My ds's school started sats prep homeworks since start of spring term. Few pages of workbooks each week, the amount ds can finish in ten minutes. Nothing more.
During Easter Holiday, we don't even have set homeworks, just given revision guide if we want to go through.

Surely they are adequately prepared in the classroom? If not, the teacher is not doing their job.
Six page revision timetables, months of past papers??? Ridiculous- they're not GCSEs!
Sounds like these teachers are concerned for their professional reputation rather than having the children's best interests at heart!

My DD is y6, she’s done no SATs work at all out of school, fairly minimal work at school, and I’m very happy to leave it at this.

We’re in an 11 plus area, September was a stressful time and DD worked really hard for that exam (although she was in no way pushed to breaking point). I used all my fucks to give on the exam that actually made a huge difference to her future.

Oh I must be incredibly neglectful then because mine never even opened the revision books and the school didn't go in for pressure and practice and masses of homework so they sat them with next to no preparation and very little stress. She still did very well and at the leaver's assembly the HT made a point of how the school's results were better than the small independent and the notoriously pushy school anyway. Nobody in a couple of years will either want to know or remember your child's SATs results so they are pretty inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

I wonder if some of this is coming from parental expectation. I have heard some parents moaning about a lack of homework at times. I have to stay away from them: the temptation to thump them is too great.

Mind you, I nearly lost it completely on the day that they decided to arrange a fun trip out for y6 (not curriculum related, it was literally billed as a fun trip) about two weeks after they’d issued that timetable. They were expecting the kids to do several hours at week at home but were happy to take them out of lessons for fun (when I’ve had trouble taking dd out for music exams...). I lost respect for school at that point.

SATs are an absolute nonsense.

SATs are a measure of the school, not the child. Repeat as often as necessary.

I might get flamed for saying this, but I honestly think forcing your child into hours of SATs practice and winding them up about the exam until they’re just little balls of stress is heading for abuse.

I'm a Year 6 teacher and I would hug you and applaud you for not bowing down to the pressure of "coaching" for SATS. Whole thing is bloody ridiculous.

Dd has autism and I told school I would pull her out of SATS if she got too anxious. We didn't buy the books or send her in for any of the extra coaching sessions etc. She did do them and got good results.
Her secondary did their own tests in Y7 anyway.

I do disagree that sats means nothing, I think it will test how well the school have covered the curriculum over the years. And some secondary do use it to set. What I don't agree is just prepping for sats. If the child have weakness or gaps, they should be concentrating to get the child get up to speed for secondary as much as possible.

There is little else I can add to what has already been said other than you have made decisions for what you consider the benefit of your child and you should ignore all others who are doing something different and seem to think you are in the wrong. You are not.

By all means support your child with work at home as you would do in any other year. But as bringonthescience so succinctly puts it, SATS are for the school. After having had one child go through SATS hating every minute of his last year at primary, I am hoping to persuade DH to move our younger DC into the junior school of his secondary independent, just so they don't have the same experience. Sounds like parents trying to score 'My kid's better than yours points. Dread to think what the atmosphere will be like on results day OP😮

I refused to make my DD do any SATS work outside of school or attend any SATS booster classes. I didn't really care what the other parents were doing, and found it irrelevant anyway - because I know what's best for my own DD and that might not be the same thing that's best for someone else's child.

As someone else has said SATS measure the school. Just wait until secondary school GCSE when they mark your child down to cover themselves.

SATs are a waste of time. Teachers hate them. Heads hate them. Parents hate them. The kids hate them. The only people who care are the government.

This is an interesting campaign: www.morethanascore.org.uk/

It’s all very well saying they measure the school but at dds secondary they set purely on sats. For example if your English score was low you were only deemed able to do one language not two. We didn’t realise this so were very chilled. If we had known I would have helped more tbh

DD1 suffers from severe anxiety at the best of times. Admittedly this does affect her schoolwork but the school are pushing and pushing her to do extra work. She is doing some work this holiday but I've told her that all I ask is that she does her best on the day. I don't give a hoot about the results, won't be sharing them with nosey friends and am half tempted to pull her out of them altogether.

Wait till year 10! Not even GCSE year, but we've just been abroad for a few days and dd has done at least 3-4 hours of revision every day! The pressure at school is intense - she goes to the same selective school her older sisters attended but the expectations are so much higher, even a few years down the line.

I’m glad we live in wales!! There’s is not SATs here!!! I can’t believe the pressure there is in England.
We have the welsh national tests. They do them every year from year 2-year 9. But there is no pressure, all we get from school is a note to say the test are x week so no holiday will be authorised during that week. They do a couple of practice tests at school but no one I know does any prep or practice at home. The kids are aware of the tests but it’s not made into a big deal. As they do them every year it’s just something that happens.
We get the scores standardised and adjusted for age and you can see where they are compared to other children born in the same month as them. Eg 100 is average.
The secondary school use them as part of their setting but as they don’t set until halfway through year 7 they use their own assessments and teachers look at their ability in class also.
All DDs class are just excited about thier last term of primary. It must be awful to have that last term clouded by SATs pressure.