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.

Nc'ed to not have this linked to usual user name.

I'm a child mental health practitioner. I fucking hate SATS. They should be scrapped. Absolute waste of time. The schools cheat (I know because my clients tell me) and the results are meaningless. Secondary schools take the results with a shovel of salt. No one cares about the results and everyone ends up stressed about them. Fucking hate them.

Off to nc back again.

MsTSwift

I bet they rearrange sets if they realise kids are in the wrong place. Seriously, secondary teachers often report that SATS results do not reflect the abilities of the child.

In the case of the secondary school my children attended they reset in Y9.

They say move them around sets but actually in reality there isn’t much shifting. I took the view of many on this thread that sats didn’t matter and were for the school but in reality I think I was wrong. Dd2 has a maths tutor.

No, we are absolutely not doing any revision or prep for the SATs on this house. We are telling DD that she must not worry about them because the SATs are to test her teachers and not her.

That said, we are in the fortunate position of knowing that DD's secondary school does not set until Year 9 and then only for Maths and English. A lot of her class are going to a school which uses SATs results to stream in Year 7...

Dd did no prep outside school at all. I also told The Head that if I felt she was being put under any pressure to perform she wouldn’t be doing them.
It will be the same for DS too
To be fair though, I don’t know of any parents who DID push their dc at the SATS stage

The pressure at school is intense - she goes to the same selective school

This is what you signed up for!

The SATS are a method of measuring the school. If the work which is needed to be covered can’t be taught during the school day, then there is a problem with the teaching. There is more to learning than SATS.

At dds secondary school sats used for setting everything in year 7 and used as the baseline for assessing progress. The primary school emphasised how they didn’t matter etc but I felt a bit misled as for dds school they did seem to matter quite a lot. Am not in education but as a lay parent that was my take on it anyway

Every secondary school has to use them as a baseline - that's how their progress is measured. Just like primary school progress is measured between KS1 assessments and KS2.

It isn't optional.

The SATS are a method of measuring the school. If the work which is needed to be covered can’t be taught during the school day

If only. In fact it’s a measure of how well teachers can teach to the test and how much a school can do with the minority of kids who are lazy / disaffected / knackered from being young carers / dyslexic / dyspraxic / terrified every day because there’s a violent child in their class. And before anyone tells me it’s the teacher’s fault kids are lazy, try teaching yourself. Certain children just cannot be arsed. It’s all just too much trouble and usually, their parents don’t give a shit either.

we aren't doing anything here - DD has been made to do past papers regularly at school since last summer, her marks are going down not up! she is more than capable of getting greater depth in all three but whether she will I don't know. I refuse to push it all. They are only year 6 and frankly her school has been fairly useless with pushing the brighter ones the whole time she has been there. She got exceptional year 2 SATs scores apparently but they seem unbothered that she is only borderline for getting the greater depth now.

Does it affect her sets in secondary? probably initially but they do move them around based on their own testing and KS3 is different to KS2 so it will all settle down I am sure but to force her to do extra stuff now is silly, if she was to do that she might as well have taken the 11+.

Depends on the school. They will be set targets based on your dd's performance in Y6 SATs. If her progress is ordinary, they may be happy with that based on her Y6 results. Or your dd might show her potential and they could aim for more.

I am so happy my dc have randomly ended up in a private school for year 6 and so have avoided all this stress totally.

“Every secondary school has to use them as a baseline - that's how their progress is measured. Just like primary school progress is measured between KS1 assessments and KS2.”

Not true - the secondary school DH teaches uses primary SATS as only one of many ways they might baseline. They make all new entrants do something called a CAT test. Then different subjects also baseline in different ways - SATS results are more useful for English and Maths, less useful /largely irrelevant for music and drama, and somewhere in between for geography and history, say.

To answer the OP, we have done no extra revision for SATS with DD beyond the homework she gets set, and she isn’t going to the Easter revision class or doing any school work at all over the Easter hols, because we are abroad on holiday.

Easter revision class

The work of the devil and proof of how desperate some schools are. To have lost sight of children’s need for a holiday after weeks of cramming is awful.

Yes done schools use a cat test the boys school did. My dds at the girls schools which doesn’t do cats it’s all on the sats. So yes fit my friends son it’s true they were irrelevant but for us they weren’t. Wish I’d looked into it or been hive proper info by the school

Sorry lots of errors on small phone!

Wigeon, it is true. SATS are used by the government as the baseline for secondary progress measures in all subjects. Schools can use anything else they like, including CATS, as an internal measure but the only official external one is based on SATS results.

No, you aren't failing her. Life is, or should be, about much more then sats.

"Not true - the secondary school DH teaches uses primary SATS as only one of many ways they might baseline. They make all new entrants do something called a CAT test." CAT tests are internal assessments used by some schools whereas SATs are national statutory tests that are used by the DfE to set targets and to measure progress. Schools don't have a choice.

It doesn't seem to matter how often we say this, someone always pops up with "Well they use CATS at my school so SATS aren't important"
SCHOOLS HAVE TO USE SATS AS THE BASELINE FOR PROGRESS MEASURES.

I think it really depends on why you don't want to do the extra work assigned by the school and what the consequences are. Your daughter's mental health has to come first but is there a middle ground between doing everything and doing nothing at all?

If your daughter ends up getting streamed into a set that is lower than her ability, how do you feel about that?

My sister in law is a primary school teacher and another friend is a governor. Parental support outside of school is a really significant component of how children progress across all abilities.

That's quite funny - not true, my dh does what he likes!

Dh can CAT test them standing on his head wearing a clown suit - but at the end of Y11, the progress of his pupils will still be measured from th point that they sat in May 5 years ago in their primary setting. Which is probably as bonkers!

SCHOOLS HAVE TO USE SATS AS THE BASELINE FOR PROGRESS MEASURES

Yes, but how progress measures influence teaching is not clear cut - and indeed are possibly as likely to be negative for a particular individual child as positive, the reaction to the type of pushing or coasting that results in a particular progress target may not help.

Under achieving in SATs would make it easy for the school to get good progress, but risks the child not being "pushed".

Over achieving in SATs would make it hard for the school to get good progress, and risks the child being demotivated and stressed by lack of achievement or over pushing.

You cannot know either how the school will react to a child not meeting or easily meeting their progress targets, nor how the child will react to the schools reaction, it could be negative.

If the secondary school immediately uses SATs scores for streaming in Y7 though, then it is more immediately influential, as being wrongly streamed there can have larger impacts as it's already a complicated time. So yes, it is different if SATs aren't used for streaming, whatever people say.

Of course that doesn't mean you should revise for them - but then if you were to need significant revision for the test, then it's possible that you need significant revision of the work.