Any advice for children sitting Sats KS2

[paul2louise]

My son will be sitting Sats this year. He is fairly bright, a bit lazy and makes mistakes. Bit laid back tbh. Are any of you parents doing any extra work to get them ready for the tests. I don't want to make it boring but can you help them practice the technique. I know they do some stuff at school.

I think that when dealing with my ds the key is perspective... And balance. Work hard, do your best, but it's not the end of the world.

Indeed!

Just announced today, in case anyone thought Ofsted wouldn’t be poring over anything during a pandemic:

schoolsweek.co.uk/ofsted-will-use-2022-sats-and-gcse-results-to-judge-curriculum-impact/?fbclid=IwAR2LKTm-KuhFfW2z47hIBvEp6Stz8wSinAa4eHVCPCxFMCSWvWIza9q-rTo

@TooManyPlatesInMotion @Feenie

Because it's only by the collective action of withdrawing our children and making a protest that these pointless exams which make Year 6 a painful experience for both staff and students will ever go away. And withdrawing your child teaches them critical thinking skills, one doesn't simply have to mindlessly conform to shitty government policies!

Some lessons are worth learning, we need to raise young ppl to have principles and a spine. Believe me, they're going to need it.

No good mate, unless everyone does it. Otherwise, you are just harming the school.

You need to direct your collective ire and join something like More Than a Score. Otherwise, you are just putting the school - which presumably had a decent reputation when you chose it - in the shit. Not cool.

[quote WaterBottle123]**@TooManyPlatesInMotion* @Feenie*

Because it's only by the collective action of withdrawing our children and making a protest that these pointless exams which make Year 6 a painful experience for both staff and students will ever go away. And withdrawing your child teaches them critical thinking skills, one doesn't simply have to mindlessly conform to shitty government policies!

Some lessons are worth learning, we need to raise young ppl to have principles and a spine. Believe me, they're going to need it. [/quote]
If I were to unilaterally decide to withdraw my ds from Sats, how would that teach him critical thinking skills? It wouldn't - quite the opposite, I would be withdrawing him on my whim. It would be my decision, not his. He cannot possibly know the context to make that choice himself.

As long as it is kept in perspective, what is the big deal? Mental arithmetic, day to day mathematical reasoning, comprehension... It is all stuff he will need to know. And getting comfortable taking tests. The bit I object to involves unnecessary pressure on staff and kids and it encroaching on other bits of the curriculum. Not the Sats per se.

Because it's only by the collective action of withdrawing our children and making a protest that these pointless exams which make Year 6 a painful experience for both staff and students will ever go away.

I’m a Y6 teacher. My kids are not in pain. Balance!

Also, Waterbottle, you are kidding yourself if you think your dc isn’t going to be tested uo the ying yang in secondary - I can tell you from experience that they are tested all the time. Even more since the cancellation on exams twice - that’s been their instruction. And for exactly the same reasons as primary. And you would be unfairly singling out your child to be different from their peers, which is tough in Y6. I don’t think you’ve actually thought any of this through.

*up
*of

@WaterBottle123

Withdraw him from them, they are a pointless box ticking exercise that exist only to assess the school.

Writing as a Year 6 teacher who detests the effects that SATS have had on many schools (relentless focus on the test/sucking the joy out of education) , do bear in mind unless there is a much greater SATS boycott, the only effect of withdrawing your child could be to punish the class teacher. It could possibly affect their performance related pay as well in some schools. The schools are the messengers- don't shoot them. It's the Education Secretary to whom you need to address your concerns. It's also putting your child in a potentially difficult position as well.

Just to pick up on a couple of things here:

Withdraw him from them, they are a pointless box ticking exercise that exist only to assess the school.
This is incorrect: that's not the purpose for their existance and they have implications for the child long after they've become irrelevant for the school.

In addition, you do not have the right to withdraw your child from the exam. That decision can only be made by the headteacher. If the child is in school then they must sit the exam unless the headteacher has already decided otherwise. The only way to prevent your child taking the exams would be to keep them off for two weeks (the testing week and the week after).

The LA may decide to fine you for unauthorised absence and you'd also be teaching your child that the best thing to do when there's something they don't want to do is just stomp their feet and refuse.

relentless focus on the test/sucking the joy out of education
If that's how a school is choosing to do Y6 then they are choosing wrong. There's absolutely no reason to approach teaching and learning in Y6 in this way. We teach a full timetable, have done across the whole year, and up to now have only done the same amount of assessment weeks and data points that any other class do.

Could not agree more - Y6 are as entitled to a broad and balanced curriculum as any other class.

Christ don't do anything. School will most likely be hammering anything so to with sats now and sucking all of the fun out of learning - replacing creativity and curiosity with exam technique all for a ridiculous test which measures schools progress but will have very little bearing on the future success of your child.

Children's minds need time off in order to consolidate what they have already learned. And sats have truly ruined what in my mind primary school should be about which is embedding a sense of curiosity and wonder in children, giving them the building blocks for reading, writing and maths and giving them the tools to begin to explore new concepts.

Disclaimer; this is all just my opinion not a fact, but I do love the work on Sugata Mistra and how his thoughts on how the education system and pedagogy have not moved sufficiently to keep up with how society has changed - basically it doesn't necessarily give you the tools to succeed in today's world.

It's insane to me that some posters are saying secondary schools won't move students to higher sets if their SATs results and subsequent GSCE targets are low. It's the opposite in my experience of secondary school teaching in a core subject. I've worked in big rowdy comprehensives where there was always a relentless focus on moving kids up. You could never move kids down - so a child who was hothoused through SATs and given a high target they cannot achieve at GCSE will be in the top set regardless of their inability to keep up. Those are the students who end up with hours of after school intervention in Year 11.

Your high achievers with low targets though - they're an easy win for school and teachers. We always wanted to move them up asap as we wanted to thin out the lower sets as much as we could. So we'd have 34 kids in Set 1 and maybe 19 in Set 4, for example, as Set 4 need more individual attention. You don't want a kid in there who actually belongs in Set 2 taking up that focus. So you move them up even if they end up sitting in the aisle of the higher set classroom. That student is a gift to the teacher because they look like an overachiever which makes it seem in the teacher's performance management as though that teacher has made outstanding progress with that student.

I have brighy primary age kids. If they perform well in their SATs, their secondary school will push and push them to top GCSE grades. I saw increasing numbers of teenagers with anxiety disorders, eating disorders and self harm issues because of the stress and pressure. My kids' primary school are starting that now, hammering Year 6 with SATs revision. But it's in my child's interest to underperform in Y6 and then seem like an overachiever in secondary school. No way will secondary keep them in lower sets where they don't need to be. These are the students who look great on the data because the secondary can say they came in at a low level but now they're flying high in Set 1. They won't be under pressure, they'll be praised for how far they've come instead of spending five years being told they have to get perfect scores every time.

Christ don't do anything. School will most likely be hammering anything so to with sats now and sucking all of the fun out of learning - replacing creativity and curiosity with exam technique all for a ridiculous test which measures schools progress but will have very little bearing on the future success of your child.

RTFT, fgs.

We are doing a maths reasoning paper at the moment as he didn't have any maths homework this week. He is enjoying it. I am sitting with him. We are off out on our bikes after lunch so will be getting some sunshine and fresh air

But it's in my child's interest to underperform in Y6 and then seem like an overachiever in secondary school.
If they are self-motivated and determined to exceeded others' expectations of them. If they aren't (and let's be honest here, most teenagers aren't) then they'll adjust down to the lower expectations given that it makes their lives way easier.

No way will secondary keep them in lower sets where they don't need to be.
Happens all the time. Movement can only happen if there is space to move into, otherwise it requires moving someone else down. Some schools even take it a step further. One of our local secondaries, an outstanding school, places the children into bands based upon their SAT results and possible targets. You can move between sets in your band but never out of your band and if you aren't in the highest band to begin with, you aren't taught the full content because you don't sit higher papers.

These are the students who look great on the data because the secondary can say they came in at a low level but now they're flying high in Set 1.
Only if putting those students into Set 1 doesn't result in one of the existing Set 1 students with higher targets being taken out and getting a negative progress score.

so a child who was hothoused through SATs and given a high target they cannot achieve at GCSE will be in the top set regardless of their inability to keep up.
You're making a lot of assumptions here. We know, from research and evidence, that the lowest levels of progress a child makes is in KS3. For some, their attainment even moves backwards during this time. It's quite possible that the children you're accusing schools of 'hot-housing' are only struggling to meet their targets because of the low expectations of KS3.

Well in my experience of secondary schools I taught in, we had a continuous upward flow of motion to higher sets. I taught Set 1s and 2s that would be groaning at the seams, kids sitting three to a (2 person) desk. I have never encountered a school that bands students based on SAT results in Y7 and never revisits that through assessments - we would be assessing every half term. What's the point of all the data we gather through Years 7-10 if we don't use it to revise children's predicted grades and sets accordingly? It's a very strange and short-sighted secondary that takes the SATs alone and never adjusts expectations, and certainly not any that I know of.

SATs are data for schools. Almost all new year 7 students will be re-tested at their secondary school to decide on best groups for ability etc or to judge their full understanding in maths, reading and English. Just keep the support up in preparation for Sept. You can download loads of past SATs papers online by just doing a quick Google of past papers. Twinkl is a good website that has lots of SATs style papers and the monthly cost isn't awful.