SATs week is here

[paxillin]

Starting tomorrow with spag. Did you manage to stop yours fretting?

Dc isn’t stressed but he is naturally quite relaxed and luckily hasn’t had to do extra classes. He has been bored to bits though. I now a couple of kids who have been very worried. Our school has done ridiculous amounts of prep. Before school classes, after school classes, Easter holiday daily classes. Test papers sent home along with homework. Boring, repetitive teaching to test. It’s a waste of time and effort. I would much rather see my child learning new information.
What happens if a school or parents boycott SATs? Seems like lots of people think the prep time could be much better spent so why are schools going along with all this?

The school would be done for maladministration, because they're statutory, unless there is union backing - NEU, the biggest teaching union is balloting for a boycott next year on 4th June.

Our school, as always, did no super prep.
Past papers for maths were done in ordinary maths lessons, papers cut up and put on tables, children chose which to do and worked through them together. Revision done via treasure hunts and murder mysteries.

Booster classes done with games, quizzes and in a relaxed manner.

No tears, no stress (from pupils and staff)

The pressure on schools is immense, but it doesn’t have to be passed on to 10 and 11 year olds.

Hi people.

Has anyone on there requested their child’s sats mark prior to waiting to receive it an the end of year report stage?

I think getting a bit stressed about tests is natural for a conscientious child, DD1 is well aware that school expects her to do well. All we can do as parents is teach them tools to deal with stress and point out that it's only by doing things that scare us that allows us to grow.

We'll, they're over. The most important thing is that DS got through them without getting upset. We've had tears in the 18 months leading up to them, but come the actual week, he took the attitude that the results don't matter, so even if the process is unpleasant they're not worth getting upset about. Both of us feel that they messed up his final two years of primary - two years of teaching to the test.

I think it is widely underestimated by people with "normal" children just how crap an experience this is for the kids who struggle. My DS has dyslexia, so he was always going to fail the SPAG test spectacularly. But he also has major issues with processing speed, so although if you give him as much time as he wants to do the maths and reading comprehension tests he can do them perfectly well, he'll probably fail those as well just because of lack of time

And it may have knock on consequences at secondary - the school he's going to has a policy of not letting children who've failed SATs take a language, for instance, and I'm not sure whether his ed psych report will outweigh the SATs scores in the eyes of the school.

My DS has dyslexia, so he was always going to fail the SPAG test spectacularly

That's not a given - I won't annoy you with examples, but I've not yet had a child with dyslexia not meet expected in reading or SPAG.

Has anyone on there requested their child’s sats mark prior to waiting to receive it an the end of year report stage?

Schools receive results on Tuesday 9th July - our.children will receive them the same day.

Another mum with dyslexic (and dyscalculic) DCs here. I'm hoping DS will do okay in the reading comp, but he is highly unlikely to score well in SPAG or maths. He feels he did his best and performed well, so I'm happy with that. Just hope the results aren't too crushing. I thought Clive Stafford Smith summed up SATS beautifully in the Guardian as the cramming of "rote nonsense".

Fermat - I would challenge the secondary for withholding second language teaching from those not passing their SPAG. The two are largely unrelated. Missing out on learning another language would be a great loss for any child.

the school he's going to has a policy of not letting children who've failed SATs take a language

What?!

My DS said that the reading was the most difficult out of them all. I agree that there is too much focus on these test (6 months!) and the rest the of year 6 is spent doing not a lot.

just seeing the comment about not doing a language in secondary if they fail SATs. Could it be more that it is linked to dyslexia and extra English? I have no personal experience but I do know a few children at different schools who are dyslexic and they don't do a language in secondary because they have additional English support lessons in those time slots. Although disappointing for them I would say that the parents on the whole prefer the fact that they have improved a lot in their English as a result. Not a perfect solution but perhaps it is in the child's best interests. If they can improve their English then they can always have the chance to do a language when they are older maybe?

Every child should be able to learn a second language and that includes kids with SEN. The difficulties experienced with dyslexia do not always align to second language learning.

I agree with you ilovesushi, but if a child needs extra input to support their English or Maths, that time needs to be stolen from another subject, or taken from break or after school.

It's tricky to timetable, because one child with SEN might prefer to give up their PE time, one to avoid Sciences, one to drop French, but there's only one support teacher so it has to be at the same time.

I agree, they SHOULD be given the chance but having been one who struggled with English as well as a language extra English would have been far better use of time to be honest. Many adults pick up languages later in life and nowadays lots of kids aren't choosing to take languages for GCSE anyway so I don't think it will mark children out as being the only ones without a language. It really is most likely to be purely timetabling related as PP said. The time has to come from somewhere, if children with dyslexia were asked to stay after school every day or lose lunchtimes etc then people wouldn't be happy with that either. We could take Art out of the curriculum for them if preferred but again some won't like that. Unfortunately it is one of those things. Like not being able to do History and Geography at GCSE in lots of schools because they clash.

These might be silly questions but do the schools get the actual papers back too or just the results? And do schools just receive the scaled scores or do they get raw scores too? What happens to the papers if they don't get sent back to schools? Just curious really.

Raw scores and scaled scores on July 9th. Papers came a week later last year.

We haven't had any papers sent back for years - we can access them online after the 9th and check for re-marks though.

I think it's just the odd unscannable paper which is returned?

Thank you Kingscote and Feenie!