Key Stage 1, Stage 2, SATS, Grammar Schools - Can someone explain this to me?

[Ahmawa]

So can someone clarify if I have got the following wrong.

Key Stage 1 is Yrs 1 and 2 until the child turns 7.

SATS at the end of KS1 are just for the teacher and child, not for the parents. They have no bearing if the child applies to junior school?

Key Stage 2 is Yrs 3,4,5,6 until the child turns 11.

SATS at the end of KS2 are for when the child applies to High School and Grammar schools, but Grammar Schools have their own admission tests at the beginning of year 11.

So overall only KS2 stats are important for when your child applies to High School but not if they apply to Grammar Schools.

So what is the real purpose of KS1 unless they also look at KS1 results for when you apply to High School or Grammar school?

Only a small minority of state schools anywhere in the country have any sort of academic qualifications for entry - those are only the grammar schools, and various tests commonly called the 11+ are used, there is no other "application" to schools at any time.

The admission criteria for schools are generally focussed around proximity to the school and religious adherence, separate KS1 and KS2 schools are also rare in most areas, they are generally the same school.

The purpose of all SATs is a way of measuring the progress of students and therefore validating the school. They are not used directly for anything to do with the students. However schools may use the scores for their own purposes.

KS2 SATs are never important for application to a secondary school, some secondary schools do use them for streaming, however that would depend on the school and individual if that is a good or bad thing. It's very unlikely to be a severely detrimental thing.

The 11+ in the few areas with grammar schools is the only examination in primary school that could have any direct bearing on the child's school destination.

Ks1 results are used by the school to measure progress across ks2. So if a child does well in ks1 sats and badly in ks2 sats then obviously something has gone wrong somewhere.

SATS are just meant to measure a child’s progress/see if the children in a school have reached a certain standard or made more or less progress than they statistically should have.

They have no bearing whatsoever on high school applications. Once a child had a place at a high school the results of KS2 Sats might be used to stream and they will be used to predict what GCSE grades the child “should” get.

Thank you for all the replies. Makes more sense now. It's just that so many friends were obsessed with SATS scores and rewarding their Kids with holidays if they scored well.

We took a laid back approach to SATs however even in a grammar school SATs might be used to set GCSE expectations (crazy but hey ho) so might influence how much a child is pushed to achieve. Holidays as an incentive is just a bit mad though.

SATs might be used to set GCSE expectations

SATs ARE used - not 'might be used' - by the government to measure the progress children make while in secondary school, using a measure called Progress8.

As a result, schools want to ensure that children make enough progress from their SATs score to GCSE to guarantee at least a score of 0 (average from the starting point) on Progress8.

There are therefore various algorithms, most often FFT (Fischer family trust) that use SATs scores and a variety of other metrics to kick out targets for the school to give for GCSEs to individual pupils, that statistically over the whole population should ensure the required progress to get at least a 0 progress8 score.

At an individual level, of course, those targets can be bonkers, and take nio account of all kinds of events that may happen during KS3 and KS4 (let alone the fact that ability at English and Maths doesn't guarantee progress in Art..), but schools use them because, ultimately, progress from SATs to GCSE is a key accountability / quality metric for them.

KS1 - Y1-2
KS2 - Y3-6
KS3 - Y7-9
KS4 - Y10-11

All just names of the years as they are grouped together. Just a way to refer to them.

SATs in year 6 are a measure of how well the Primary school has done and are used for GCSE targets and Progress 8 which in turn is used to measure how well the high school does.

Sats are useful to parents too. They will test if the child has learned what they are expected to learn in ks1 or ks2. So, if the child has no particular difficulty, and school is teaching well, they should get expected result. If not, either school isn't teaching well, or the child may have some difficulty.

Wow. Thanks for this.

So sake for argument you have a kid that has say average SAT scores but then goes onto high school and it clicks and really progresses would they be held back because they have been streamed based on their SATs?

Does SATs mean you are labelled from age 11 and pretty much cannot change that? Seems a bit awful to me, but I may have this wrong.

If it’s a good school then any streaming should be re-assessed on a regular basis.

Unfortunately not all schools are good schools.

Some schools test again in Year 7 to stream from.

If you have a child with average SAT scores at Y6, who then performs brilliantly at secondary school, the secondary school will be delighted because they will be getting a positive progress 8 score (above 0); I would have thought there is every incentive for the school to keep that improving as much as they can.

On the other hand: if you have made your child practice and practice for Y6 SATS and they get a brilliant score, they may well be set targets for GCSE that they cannot hope to meet, even if they are continuing to progress well.

So I don't really understand why parents seek the best possible y6 SAT score for their children. I have helped my Y6 DS do the SATS past papers he brought home for Easter holidays homework, but I won't be going out and buying any more papers.

I think it depends on the school, how fixed the streams / sets are and what subject. For maths it could have an impact because higher sets might go faster and so they might cover more material which then makes it hard to catch up if they move up a set, however lower sets might not sit the higher papers. For say history it will probably have less of an impact because they won't start the GCSE syllabus until yr9/10 so learning about the crusades in a lower set won't affect their learning about the history of medicine in yr 10.

It is crazy though that dd has high marks on SATs maths and English (We did not push her) so is set high target grades in all subjects including Art and Computing. We don't set much store by the target grades as I think that the evidence is fairly non existent for their reliability and the school don't seem overly concerned if she doesn't meet a target. As she has got older the targets seem to have been adjusted too. I imagine though that if either the parents or the school were really pushy about meeting targets it would be a more difficult situation. I can see too that a child who didn't do well on SATs might be set low targets across the subjects when they are really good at say humanities. Hopefully a good school will set more individualistic goals once they know the students and certainly it hasn't been a problem for our dc.

In DD’s secondary school they do CAT tests in year 7 and use these to set the children. Then set reshuffles in each year based on how they do in twice annual tests.

They will have been placed into a junior school or secondary school before they even sit their sats. SATs are for predicting gcse grades and putting the schools in a league table.

As KS2 assessments are done after children have been allocated their secondary school places they can hardly have a bearing on them!

A good school will certainly not be holding back children that are making better progress than their KS2 results would suggest. I know schools that review their maths sets every term, for example, to shuffle around those that are really flying, and those that have revealed themselves as needing more support.

Lots of schools with extremely high GCSE results (selective and non-selective) teach in mixed-ability groups for everything. One size doesn't fit all.

Sats are for the primary school. No parents give a hoot at our school. No rewards. Are tgrre really parents who cancel a holiday if a child does not achieve a certain mark in sats?

Our secondary does not use sats for streaming they do cats in year 7