SATs ? It's gobbledigok

[BeaLola]

I really have no idea at all ! However going hoping someone can explain the numbers to me ?
So DS has come home with a 1 page summary of SATS - if I have any questions I can book a 5 min spot for next week (!)

The good - I hope - it says Achieved Standard - the numbers though are low ?

This is a genuine post for someone who has never been through it trying to get her old grain to understand it !

English Grammar, Punctuation and Vocab -31
Spelling -11
Total - 42 and scaled = 102

English Reading Test - 28
Scaled = 100

Mathematics Arithmetic- 36
Reasoning 1 - 29

Reasoning 2 -29

Total maths 94
Scaled = 109

Thanks if you got this far

We've just had our results letter home this morning (DD is 7, coming to the end of Y2). I've had a look at that link, thanks for posting. It doesn't give any indication of what proportion of children are 'working at greater depth' so it's fairly meaningless. I've tried to ask the school before but it doesn't seem to be information they're keen to share and a friend at school just up the road has had a similar experience. Is there any way of finding out?

“It doesn't give any indication of what proportion of children are 'working at greater depth' so it's fairly meaningless”

Why?

But she would struggle to work out e.g. 3x13. I don't think it would occur to her to add 3 to 12x3, or to do 10x3 and 3x3.

Can you work on visualising what 3 x 13 or any other numbers actually means? Groups 12 lots of 3 Lego pieces for instance, then see how she'd work out 3 x 13 - would she know to add another group of three?

@BertrandRussell yes that's not very clear is it. What I mean is, it's hard to get a sense of where that puts her among her peers. This is something I struggle to get out of the school. 'Working at greater depth' sounds good, but if it applies to 70pc of the class, it doesn't really mean much in achievement terms. Needless to say this isn't an opinion I'd be sharing with her! When I was at school in the 80s they gave parents more of an idea of where their child sat within the class, so I can't help wanting to know this about my own kids. Has anyone had any success (in mainstream state schools) of winkling this information out of a teacher?

Smogsville. Some classes might have lots of high achieving kids, and some might have few or none. It's more helpful to know where she is in terms of where she should be, and that's the point of the scaled scores.

I'm guessing Smogsville was wondering the same as me - how you map SATs scores onto the expected progress in secondary - i.e., what scores are likely to point to a child going to get 5 grade C or above in old money (i.e. a child that will be employable in adult life), what scores are likely to point to 8 GCSEs at at least C or above (so likely to go on to further education).

My feeling, reading the DfE website (I and a friend, both with STEM PhDs, independently looked into this and couldn't make head nor tail of it) is that the SATs scores are designed by the government to be as obscure as possible to stop parents and journalists drawing any solid conclusions about how they map onto actual future educational and life prospects. There is for instance, no way of mapping it onto a Gaussian for the population as a whole, only the vague target that once the marks have been scaled (according to some algorithm never actually revealed), somewhere between 70 and 80% of children should "meet expectations."

Noble's link upthread to how to find out how standards at entry to secondary link to percentages of pupils getting English and maths at grade 4 (I'm not quite sure - is this an old-fashioned C or an old-fashioned D?) is helpful, though I'm still not sure what counts as the bottom group - is it an average across all three tests of below 100, or is it any one test failing to meet expectations?

To be honest, all this is pretty depressing. I've just been looking through DS's psych report (with a view to getting him retested before secondary). According to his SATs results, he'll be lucky to get grade 4 in English at GCSE. Yet his psych report puts him on the 98th centile for generalised intelligence (and below the 20th percentile for both processing speed and working memory, which is why he bombed out on his English test). I feel quite despairing about the whole thing - all this potential and he's on a fast track to nowhere.

We were meant to have moved on from the days when kids with dyslexia were just written off as thickos, but I'm not sure we have.

“what scores are likely to point to a child going to get 5 grade C or above in old money (i.e. a child that will be employable in adult life),”
Blimey. Not sure what to say to that....

It doesn’t matter what anyone else scores though does it? I’m sure we don’t really want to go back to “form orders” as we used to have. Your DD is being judged against an assessment system, not other DC. It’s only really prep schools that now set and order pupils in such a way. You can usually tell by who children work with in class. Usually similar DC.

That's not meant as a value judgement, it's meant as a statement of fact. I've lived in working class areas with very high levels of unemployment, where the kids are failed by the (underfunded) education system (NB, the city I used to live in this was not the fault of the individual teachers who were struggling against the odds to help all the children in their care despite the lack of political will to invest in education or in policies that would actually help). But it remains the fact that if you can't get GCSE English and maths, your employment prospects are pretty bleak, and if you want something that pays a living wage 5 GCSEs are about the minimum.

No parent wants to see their child ending up in the gig economy or working on a zero hours contract, unable to scrape together the money for a deposit on a house.

That's not elitism, that's the harsh reality of life in a capitalist society currently engaged in a Hobbesian race to the bottom.

That's a deposit on a house to rent, btw, not a house to buy - houses to buy are now beyond the reach of anyone who isn't in a profession or has made a success in business.

This isn't a "I want to be able to brag that my little Johnny's doing better than your kid" situation, this is an "oh fuck, my son's future is going to be screwed up by this through no fault of his own and no matter how hard he works" situation.

Sorry. Comment above was to Smogsville.

Surely the quality of teaching at secondary, choice of subjects, determination of the child and a whole host of other things affect y7-11. Results are never going to be based on Sats results! What does it matter that you cannot predict grades? Surely if each DC does their best, that’s good enough. Also is intelligence the same as exam results? Not sure exams measure this.

Thing is I took Noble's advice, and looked up the school DS is going to for the percentages of low attainers getting grade 4 in English/maths - 12%, and grade 5 - 0%. If that's indicative, DS is probably not going to get GCSE English, which will cut him off from pretty much anything except minimum wage, casual employment.

I don’t agree with you NotMetExpectations. In some areas, provided DC has a partner and two incomes are taken into account, DC certainly can get property for £100,000. This doesn’t require a great wage but might need parents to help with a deposit. I’m not saying it’s easy but few people who didn’t have good jobs bought houses on their own in the good old days. Well not where I lived anyway!

I think as SEN has become more understood it’s inevitable these DC need more money. It’s a bit like the NHS. The more illness you can cure, the more you want to cure it. It’s inevitable budgets cannot keep up with such a vast array of SEN to deal with.

@NotMetExpectations yes that's what I was wondering although not bc I'd thought as far ahead as you, just that I'd like to know (as would DH and friends have mine are interested too). I don't think it's that weird to want to know about one's own child, is it? Or perhaps it is!

Is there anywhere online that shows the percentage of children achieving each score either for this year or previous years? Also is there a formula for the government expectation for GCSE for each KS2 score ie for the schools progress measure?

I did the same with our school ks1 to ks2 and last year in maths 0% passed ks2 if they failed ks1. I was surprised at this as
Ks1 is effected by age.
Some kids just wont have bothered as there is no motivating factor. I guess though that is against teacher assessments.
Im not comfortable with saying from some add/sub and easier TT which kids will eventually be better at maths.
And with ks1 ds did very well, almost full marks. But dp and I are very weak at English (he failed and resat) so imo it is very very unlikely that ds ability with reading will translate to English and writing ability.

So happy our school doesn’t do SATs. Kids doing fine.

@Pipandmum as it happens ours does them in most subtle way possible, leaving out the optional SPAG one and I'd forgotten all about them until DD handed me an envelope this morning! I have mixed feelings. None of our current Y2 seems to have had any worries or anxieties about them. The school up the road which was always regarded as excellent saw a dip in its results and is now pulling its socks up with a new head. Perhaps it might not have been so easy to track the dip in standards without SATs? Who knows. Assume your school is independent if you don't do them or is there a secret get out clause?! From experience I'd have thought most academic indies would have their own, more rigorous testing regimes in any case.

NotMet I’ve got M level qualifications in educational assessment and I can’t work out how the SATS scaled score is reached or how it relates to anything really. They work it out after the SATS have been marked, I think they want to avoid schools working out the mark boundaries year to year.

I would try not to worry, the GCSEs are many years away and a good SEN department should be able to put in place access arrangements to support your child. I have bright children with significant needs doing well every year. Remember too that dyslexia can be a great asset outside of school, a disproportionate number of UK millionaires have dyslexia, in an increasingly automated world being able to think differently can be a significant asset.

Jeez what a thoroughly depressing thread! I have a ds similar to yours NotMetExpectations, though a bit younger. I think I'd been slightly in denial about what the reality of 'not meeting expectations' in KS1 might involve for a child's future. Ds is v able at English but struggles hugely with writing and spelling, and has already written himself off in maths.

Wonderstuff I missed your very reassuring post before posting mine. I hope you are right. It's so hard to watch our bright kids with spLDs struggling in a system not designed for either their needs or their strengths.

Please don't think anything is set in stone. With targeted work and support improvements can be made.
However, the new GCSES (certainly in English) don't really function as a test of functional skills. They're aimed quite a bit higher than that. And half of the English Language paper is actually unseen literary analysis. It's quite different.

Supportive, interested parents help. A student who cares helps. But I think for those who won't get a 5 or above the current spec is a disservice.

I really wouldn't worry about KS1 - most of the world don't send their kids to school before 7. I think the KS1 curriculum is awful actually, my bright 9 year old has always hated school, and as a teacher myself it breaks my heart. I am confident - and have expressed this many times to his teachers - that he will be absolutely fine. I am confident because he is articulate, he actually is interested in learning about lots of things (school seems to put him off rather than engage him in learning). I have a husband who went to university and learnt to read in secondary school, a dear friend who's an Oxford professor and started reading at 9 and a family member who's a headteacher and started reading well at 8.

I also teach children at secondary with SEN. I have kids with very significant needs who are friendly, engaging, resilient and I'm sure will actually lead full and happy lives. I have kids with fairly minor difficulties who are whiny, mean, difficult and feel the world is against them. I worry for those kids. GCSEs are not the most important things in the world. SATs aren't even on the list.

Thanks wonderstuff that's reassuring. I've got adult friends with dyslexia who've been very successful so I know it can be done with the right support.

And very good point about attitude - although it's probably hard to tell because I've been venting my frustration on this thread, in RL I'm trying to foster a "can-do" attitude in DS: "OK, this is hard, but what can you and I do to help you succeed anyway?"

@noblegiraffe you said that "For progress 8 they average the reading and maths assessment score so that’s probably what they do here too. (Writing and spag don’t count)."

My DD's teacher has actually said that for progress 8 they use Reading, Writing, and Maths scores (not SPAG). For Writing, they artificially assign the following:

113 for GDS
103 for EXS
91 for WTS

I googled it and found these ready reckoners, see link below for 2018. You can calculate progress 8 measures for one pupil (and for entire schools if you have data) by inputting children's levels at KS1 and scaled scores at KS2.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/ready-reckoners-and-transition-matrices-for-key-stage-2

Not sure how this will change for 2019 though...