Ks2 Sats disappointed

[TooManyPlatesInMotion]

I'm not sure how best to support/comfort my DS. The school heaped the pressure on for sats, he worked hard and did well in all his practice papers, getting grater depth scores in reading and maths. The results are in and his marks, while fine, are not what he hoped for or got in all the previous mock assessments.

He is now really down on himself, quiet and subdued (not at all like him) and says he is now worrying about secondary school.

I have said all the usual things - you worked hard and did his best, that is all any of us can do etc, it won't affect the start of life at secondary school, we are proud of him, sometimes exams don't go to plan etc. I'm not getting through.

Any ideas? I feel bad for him.

@Motherhubbardscupboard
It never affected my son's development, how the school streamed them (except maybe first term of Y7 until they did assessments) or, importantly, what my son or we considered he was capable of achieving.

Which is how it should be in a perfect world. However, if there are, for example, limited places in the top 2 sets in Maths, who are the only children learning the higher content, then places will be allocated to those with higher targets rather than just those performing well but exceeding their lower targets. Equally, if there is funding for intervention, it'll be invested in those 'off-target' first rather than just those who would benefit.

It isn't how it should be. But the reality is that departmental funding, OFSTED gradings and even whether leaders and department heads get to keep their jobs can be affected by Progress 8 accountability measures so it is affecting the education of children.

There are no official target grades. Predicted grades are what you think a child will achieve, so these are of course set individually by teachers.

Progress 8 does not use any of the possible FFT targets. And there are a range on FFT Aspire to choose from.

The range is so you can set your school's level of challenge: do you want to be in the top 50% of schools for progress? Top 20%? Top 5%? Then gives you what each child (and the general cohort) needs to get in order to make that happen.

Based on previous data. Not on the data that will actually be used to calculate the Progress 8 measure. Which, admittedly, used to be reasonably predictable, although obviously less so now. If schools want to use individual targets, then FFT is usually what they use.

Yes, you won't know the final Progress 8 measures until after the results are in but they are entirely predictable, particularly at secondary with the 1-9 system rather than the 80-120 system for primary. Targetting from the scaled scores has been in place now for years and, with organisations like FFTAspire, the accuracy of generated targets is typically bang on. Again, the pretend that this doesn't affect an individual child's education is just silly.

Your ds did okay. 100+ means your dc has met the expected standard (ie he passed). 120 is the highest score he could get. KS2 SATS are mainly used for setting predicted grades at secondary and which set/class they’ll go in. If he knows he could’ve done better then he can prove this in Y7.

He has already had to do separate assessments for secondary, so I am aware it isn't hugely important from that perspective. I am as also happy with the approach his secondary school will take (I think). I was just a bit worried and sad for him. Seems so much pressure to heap on. And I know he needs to learn not to open envelopes not addressed to him - we have had a word about that issue 🙄

I wonder if it’d help him if you talked to him about practice tests vs the actual thing- when you’re taking an actual test, it’s a different feeling and you sometimes put more pressure on yourself/ feel more nervous, and that can make answering the questions more difficult. This is probably the first time he’s sat a ‘proper’ test (ignoring the argument that SATS shouldn’t be a big thing- which I agree with) and that might have had an impact on his scores, if they’re lower than he’s been getting recently.

Thanks @Catquestion I'll have a chat with him about that, good idea.