SATs

[MrsLighthouse]

My ten year DS has been told if he doesn’t do well in his SATs he is “giving up on his future” “…..will end up working in Tesco” ….and not get a “good start” in secondary school. He is a hardworking but average child and terrified ! AIBU to complain about this ? I’d be interested to hear what other parents / teachers think ….

No idea why SATS are so hypes up. Well, I guess good SAT results look good for the school but they are meaningless for the children.

Our school never made much of a deal, I certainly never knew when they took place, but this year our teacher was asking if children are worried about them
No, if anyone was worried about anything that was 11+.

I’d be —having a word with— asking the teacher where that could possibly come from!

That's an awful thing to tell a ten year old! It could really damage his self esteem. If he is having problems with any aspect of the curriculum, the teacher should be putting support in place, not threatening him with a wholly imaginary scenario. I would contact the school. I am a retired teacher.

Thank you @Handholding587. It’s a fairly new teacher but even so.

Firstly, what is so terrible about working at Tesco?! Fairly likely one of the children has a relative who does. Secondly that's too much pressure for 10yos. Yes you want them to take it seriously but they will not ruin their future at 10 with mediocre SATS results!

I’d contact the school and let them know that he’s been saying these things and is upset, so they can look into it. I’d find out the context of the discussion before complaining though.

There are several things wrong with what has been said to him: the disparaging of a job at Tesco, the push of added pressure etc. I wouldn't say anything close to that to my Y6 class and I would expect a parent to raise it. Be prepared to hear a slightly different version of events though and keep an open mind in terms of how you respond to that.

However, Drink is wrong to say that the SAT results are meaningless for the children. This is a common misconception. Those results will generate the official GCSE target grades for each child against which the secondary school will be judged. That means that secondary schools will make decisions regarding setting, additional support, even deployment of staff, etc. with those targets in mind.

Students with higher targets will be pushed to meet them and will not be allowed to fall back or coast. Unfortunately, there are examples in schools of students with lower targets being "banked" when they reach them and not being stretched as far as they could have gone because the time/staff/resources are needed for students who are off-track.

So, depending on the school, the cohort and the child's individual level of self-motivation, the SAT results could have quite a significant and long-lasting impact.

Thanks @lamnotthe one. I understand the need for SATs and have no issue with the kids being stretched and l also take the point that my DS’s version might not be the full picture . However the comments still feel wrong . I’ll speak to the head of school and see what they have to say.

My eldest son is in year 8 now. Along with every other pupil who is currently in year 7 or 8, he did not do year 6 SATs. It has had no impact at all as far as I can see. His secondary school appear to have been able to give him target grades and meet his needs without them.

My first thought was that another child in his class has been talking about the SATs, and your DS is repeating things that another poor panicking kid has said. I hope that you can successfully reassure your boy.

@Iamnotthe1

There are several things wrong with what has been said to him: the disparaging of a job at Tesco, the push of added pressure etc. I wouldn't say anything close to that to my Y6 class and I would expect a parent to raise it. Be prepared to hear a slightly different version of events though and keep an open mind in terms of how you respond to that.

However, Drink is wrong to say that the SAT results are meaningless for the children. This is a common misconception. Those results will generate the official GCSE target grades for each child against which the secondary school will be judged. That means that secondary schools will make decisions regarding setting, additional support, even deployment of staff, etc. with those targets in mind.

Students with higher targets will be pushed to meet them and will not be allowed to fall back or coast. Unfortunately, there are examples in schools of students with lower targets being "banked" when they reach them and not being stretched as far as they could have gone because the time/staff/resources are needed for students who are off-track.

So, depending on the school, the cohort and the child's individual level of self-motivation, the SAT results could have quite a significant and long-lasting impact.

Secondary schools do their own baseline tests they do not rely on SATs. SATs are used initially until their own tests are completed. Children are asssesed every term and moved around sets so they have no baring at all on GCSE targets.

Contact the school and find out what has happened. That’s terrible from the teacher and he needs to get a grip on his on anxiety and not take it out on 10 year olds.

Wow how sad and inappropriate. Perhaps it is time to change schools but first try to resolve this by speaking to the head teacher.

I really hope the teacher didn't say that. Totally inappropriate.
I expect there are plenty of parents of pupils in the school who work at Tesco or similar retailers. They should all get together and ask this teacher how they magically get food and household items to appear in their homes if it wasn't for supermarket workers. If working in Tesco was so terrible then during the lockdowns the shop would have been closed because obviously something so awful to be working for can't possibly have been essential and supermarket staff wouldn't have counted as keyworkers.
Ironically Tesco and the other major supermarkets do a lot of charity work with provides equipment for primary schools.
That teacher is a snobby arse.
(Seriously...if it's true you need to complain to the Head)

BooksAndHooks
Secondary schools do their own baseline tests they do not rely on SATs. SATs are used initially until their own tests are completed. Children are asssesed every term and moved around sets so they have no baring at all on GCSE targets.

I'm afraid you're incorrect. Secondary schools are free to do their own baselines that they can use to set their own internal targets but these are not the child's official GCSE target. The school has no control over those. They are used by the DfE to judge the performance of the school as part of the progress 8 measures.

In some schools, pupils move but there are some that band the pupils from entry in Year 7 and do not permit movement between the bands. That means that if you weren't a high achiever at the end of KS2, you could have certain paths cut off for you, such as higher GCSE maths content or the option for triple Science, etc.

Of course it would be unacceptable for schools to put 10yos under that kind of pressure. However, I wonder if some of this might be coming from some of the other children rather than the school?

I do think there is a lot of misinformation on these threads about SATS only mattering for the school, not the child. Many, though not all, secondary schools use them to inform setting in Year 7, and all will use the SATS to set target GCSE grades as this is how the schools are required to measure progress/value added.

I do think there is a lot of misinformation on these threads about SATS only mattering for the school, not the child. Many, though not all, secondary schools use them to inform setting in Year 7, and all will use the SATS to set target GCSE grades as this is how the schools are required to measure progress/value added.

Which would matter for the child if sets in year 7 were set in stone which they aren’t.

The rest is school results reporting and not child related

Yes, of course sets can change, but being in a lower set in Year 7 can really knock a child's confidence. I have seen it happen. And the targets that secondary schools will be measured by don't change even if the sets do.

I used to feel that the SATS were totally irrelevant for individual children, and only used to measure the school. It was only when my dc progressed to secondary school that I understood how the SATS fed into certain immutable targets that would follow her right through to GCSE. As it happens, she did exceptionally well in SATS in any case, so her targets were very high, but the fact remains that I did not understand how the results would be used until well after the assessments were done and dusted.

@LittleBearPad

I do think there is a lot of misinformation on these threads about SATS only mattering for the school, not the child. Many, though not all, secondary schools use them to inform setting in Year 7, and all will use the SATS to set target GCSE grades as this is how the schools are required to measure progress/value added.

Which would matter for the child if sets in year 7 were set in stone which they aren’t.

The rest is school results reporting and not child related

It's very child related and will affect pretty much all of them without them even knowing about it.

Let's say that you're a school and you only have the resources to give additional targeted support to 5 students from your middle Maths group. They are all around a 4 or 5 but each of them has the potential to get a 6. The decision as to who gets the support will go like this:

Some had lower SAT results and so are targetted for a 3. They are already above that so they don't get the support. Could have done better but the school didn't need them to.
Some got age related in their SAT results but only just. They are targetted for a 4 and are achieving it. They could get the support, it would be good for the school, but only if there aren't others that need it more.
Some had higher SAT results - still age-related but a stronger score - and their targets are actually 6s. Ah. The additional support goes to these students because if they don't get the 6, it negatively affects the school.

Those decisions are made on a daily basis. You can even see examples in the TV shows about academies. There was one where the school could afford to give additional 1:1 tuition and advice to a select number of students. Who got it? A specific group of boys because they were the ones furthest away from their official target. The target set by their SAT results.

Thanks for all the messages …l found every one interesting. I DID speak to the deputy head and another teacher today informally, who was visibly shocked to hear the way my 10yr olds were viewing SATS ( yes there’s 2 of them ) and agreed that the language being used around them wasn’t helpful. It was a very good discussion actually and she said she would talk to the head and teachers to see if they could role out a more appropriate understanding of what SATs were to the yr 6 kids. Another parent joined in and the members of staff seemed really pleased we’d brought this up as they said the last thing they wanted ( or needed l expect ) was a load of stressed children ! I did check with my DC around the “giving up on your future” comment and confirmed that’s what the teacher had said on several occasions so l did mention that specifically. Hopefully the children will come out of it with a positive experience . Glad l mentioned it on here as l didn’t want to think l was over-reacting.

My daughter was struggling hugely too. This is a great resource to help reconnect with themselves

www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1169378547/workbook-to-relieve-sats-exam-stress-and?ref=shop_home_active_1

As a Y6 teacher, I'd appreciate it if a parent had a complaint about me, they'd come and speak to me first before going to my boss.
As for the comment, I don't think the teacher should have said it. But I wonder where their anxieties are coming from- I'd imagine they are being put under a lot of pressure from SLT. By this stage of the year they will already know which children are expected to get what grade.
As for SATS themselves, they are a wicked invention that sucks the joy out of primary school. Walk in the park to identify bird species- no- we need to stay in class and revise the difference between the different types of conjunctions and make sure our semi-colons are written not just in the correct place but the dot isn't too high up in relation to the letters....