When you know your child will fails yr 6 SATS

[Dancethebluez]

DS is anxious about KS2 SATS. He is delayed academically by 3 years, has learning difficulties, extra support at school, home tutor etc. Has EHCP, in a mainstream primary. He struggles with anxiety around academic work, and has very low self confidence.

We‘ve not made a thing about Yr6 SATs being important to us, as he won’t pass them. As part of EHCP provision he’ll have a reader and scribe for papers where possible. This has reassured him a little.

It sounds like school has cranked up the preparation from last half-term though, and it sounds like there are quite a few children who are anxious re SATs.

If I thought he could pass them I could reassure him, remind him of previous academic success etc. But I know, and the school know he can’t pass.

Anyone have any words of wisdom about how to reassure a child worried about failing when they will not pass. Some of the things I’ve said to him are that his results will help school to see what support he needs in the future, but he still has absorbed the idea that these are hugely important tests to pass.

To those who’ve asked why we don’t withdraw, we’ve struggled to get his delay recognised. Now it is thanks to evidence used for EHCP, but SATS results will also evidence this and hopefully help in secondary school as they’ll have incentive to support to boost their progress 8 score from what I understand.

My DD was the exact same as your son. She was 3-4 years behind, EHCP etc. She was so stressed about SATS, everyone was talking about it and revision started from Feb half term. Once they were over, they were all talking about results. She did badly, I can't even remember what she got, maybe 50 or 60. When she asked me if she passed, I told her that you can't fail them so yes, but that her score was low. I didn't tell her what it was, pretended not to know.
She was meant to have all these exam arrangements but she didn't. School was crap about it.
They also told us they don't matter but that was a load of crap too. Since Y7 every single school report she has, has got a predicted GCSE grade based on those SATS results. She's not an idiot and can see that her 'flight path' or whatever that is, is really low. We've asked to take this off and they've said no. She's now in Y10 and getting 5s, 6s and 7s in her mocks but her flight path hasn't changed because of the sats.
If I could go back in time, knowing how much they stressed her, I'd genuinely refuse to make her do them. It's 1 week. I wish I had booked a cheap term time holiday for that week.

@Dancethebluez I've never seen SATS used as evidence for EHCP stuff. You're better off getting an EP and using that. I'm not sure Progress 8 is what secondary schools are worried about when they get kids like ours OP.

My son is in year 9 now which means that he did not take year 6 SATs due to the pandemic. You can tell your lovely boy that there are literally thousands of young people two or three years ahead of him at school who did not do the SATs. Their secondary schools were still able to assess them and make GCSE predictions for them. How can they be so important if all these people are totally unaffected by not having done them?

I can completely understand your predicament though. My eldest really struggles at school. I knew that had he taken the SATs he would not have scored very well. I was worried about the affect on him of having to battle through a week of tests that he was just not equipped to complete. You could tell your son that he has your permission to tell anyone who asks that he scored full marks on every test. If you won't contradict him, and the teacher is not allowed to tell other pupils about his marks, then nobody will ever know what he scored.

SATS are not a pass/fail test. Children recieve a score. They do not 'fail' even if their score is low.
It angers me so much when schools use those words.

Honestly - in our case they didn't count at all. The secondary school make their own assessments. Concentrate on gaining your chosen place for secondary, building a relationship with their SENCO and building your son's confidence. If he has a passion or skill in any other area - use this to raise him up. Tell him to try his best with his SAT's (if you choose to sit them) but not massively important. Maybe offer a end of year treat to look forward too - lego set, cinema trip - whatever he enjoys. We found secondary more inclusive and adaptable - despite our fears.

Not sure if possible but if you've identified anxiety at exam time - maybe some therapy techniques can be investigated by your current SENCO or privately if funds permit.

Your DS can only do his best and this should be his focus. If out of 10 questions he did his best and got two. Brilliant! He has done his best!!
SATs are nothing more than the criteria that statistics say that children will be able to do xyz at a particular age. Some achieve it but lots don't - everyone is different and SATs don't take note of that.

If your dd was 3-4 years behind in y6 and getting 5s-7s in GCSEs then her flight path must be amazing! Well done on that fantastic progress.

My daughter's (yr7) were on her progress update at the end of last term so they definitely have them.
However they only used them for the first 2-3 weeks to set Maths/English and then did their own assessments.

@NCTDN We can't quite believe it to be honest. She had no help in primary school and her secondary school has been incredible. Things really clicked for her this year though, she barely wrote a paragraph last year and now she's writing essays. She's still very behind though and struggling with some of the pressure, so we are moving her to a specialist dyslexia school where she will retake this year and hopefully get grades that reflect her ability well, in a less stressful environment.

Please speak to the SENCO at the school
Children who are not working at the Ks2 level are exempt from the tests

They are still counted in for numerical reasons ( which is crazy to think that children who didn’t take the test are still part of the formula to decide the % pass rate in the school)
Not all children with an EHCP undertake the tests - discuss with the senco and discuss their reasoning if your child is to undertake some or all SATs

@Dancethebluez
Just a couple of things. An anxious child can get upset if you say these exams measure how good his teacher is. That then opens up the possibility of him feeling he’s letting his teacher down by “failing” sats. I think it’s better to say it’s to access the right help in the future. Even if if that’s a bit questionable. For a similar reason, I would let him sit them if all his friends are. When parents remove Dc they are no longer part of the chat. Part of the group. They are perceived to be having a good time whilst friends are working at school. I would be careful about this for an anxious child.

I would try and see the teacher and explain his worries and ask if they can reduce the pressure.

Neither of my kids did SATs. It hasn't affected them or their time in secondary education. They are both now at university and absolutely no one cares about their GCSE results let alone SATs.

Keep him off school SATs week and do something fun instead.

It's awful to see the effect of SATs pressure on some kids. Every year we get a few children in our home education group whose parents took them out of school for part or all of Y6 because their schools were drilling them hard and making them anxious, or causing them to think that their best efforts weren't good enough.

My daughter has had extreme exam anxiety for years but the SATs went fine as I had told her over and over again that they don't matter, they're testing the teacher not the child, nobody but the school will ever ask or care what she got in them. It's a shame really, they're the only exams she's ever aced!

All this shifting the test to the teacher simply isn’t true and it’s unfair. Children see quite clearly it’s them doing the tests. Therefore be honest. Children really do understand what is happening. The key to this is keeping a lid on pressure. It’s perfectly possible.

SATS really are a measure of how a school is performing in their value added at the Year 6 point rather than a reflection on the individual child. They are of no real significance in secondary school. CATS, if they are taken in Year 6, are more a reflection of potential in secondary and some secondaries do CATS type tests again when they are in Year 7. I don't see any issue with telling your DS that the purpose of the SATS exams is to look at how well the school is doing with their overall teaching and that his individual result is only one small piece of the jigsaw as there are lots of DC doing them.

Sorry SATs and CATs. typing on small screen phone.

Bloody SATs! - they are not there to improve education nor the ability of teachers to educate. They are a bloody nuisance. At the school where I am chair of governors no child is worried about SATs because they are ignored - the children just roll up one day and do them as per ordered, then get on with school life.

If your son is anxious about it he will have picked this up from school. That is a disgrace.

Pre- key stage assessments would still give you the information you need about what your child can and can't do.
Teacher assessed.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pre-key-stage-2-standards#full-publication-update-history

My DD got so stressed in her yr2 SATs that her teacher removed her from class during them. She was in a year that thankfully didn't take them in year 6. She would have had low results. I have always said to her and my other DDs it is about the teachers and whether the curriculum is ok and not about them. But then I am also one of those parents who refuses to do the 'so proud of Fanny at parents evening she is doing so well' on Social Media

Just to correct a few bits if misinformation from this thread:

Removing a child from the exams
All Y6 children in school during the testing window (the week of SATs and the following week) must sit their exams. The only main exception to this is if a child is currenting attaining below their Key Stage (i.e. at the expected standard for a Y2 child or below) and the headteacher agrees to remove the child from the exams. There are a small number of individual exceptions (emotionally traumatic event the day before, etc.) but these are on a case by case basis. It is possible to take your child out for two weeks: they will miss the exams but will also be counted as an unauthorised absence.

Pass or fail
All children receive a scaled score in each of the following:
Reading (assessed by one exam),
Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling (assessed by two exams),
Maths (assessed by three exams), and
Writing (assessed based on the standard of independent writing produced within class and evidenced across 6 pieces).

The scaled score is between 80 and 120.
80 - 99 means a child is "Working Towards the expected standard for the end of KS2".
100 - 109 means a child is "Working at the expected standard for the end of KS2".
110+ means a child is "Working at Greater Depth withing the expected standard for the end of KS2".
This is how they are reported but it's the actual scaled score itself that matters. None of these are a fail: they are just lower scores. But some interpret a score of 99 or lower as failing. This isn't entirely correct nor overly helpful.

However, if your child does not sit the exam because they are attaining below KS2 and so can't access the exams, he/she will get a scaled score of 70 for that specific area.

How scaled scores are used.
A child's scaled scores are used to identify their target grades for GCSE. These are not targets set by the school and cannot be changed by the school (although schools are welcome to set their own internal ones, they don't actually mean anything). These are not superseeded by CAT results or any other testing that secondaries might do.

Secondary schools are judged by how well they get children joining in Y7 to hit those targets in Y11. This is known as "Progress 8".

Why does that matter?
There are a number of decisions made at a senior level in secondary schools that will be affected by the target grades of children. Parents are incredibly unlikely to be aware of any of these decisions nor how targets have influenced them. In fact, most class teachers will also be unaware as these are often decisions made by those in departmental leadership or SLT and, even then, only by people who are actively involved in the use or analysis of data.

What kind of decisions?
It varies from school to school but, personally, I have seen:

1. Results/targets having an impact on which form group your child ends up in,

1. Results/targets having an impact on which set your child ends up in, including some children being "locked" in a set that they shouldn't be in simply because they have to get a certain result and that's the lowest set still teaching the higher content. This also then means there are less spaces for children to move up from lower sets into sets teaching higher content.

1. Results/targets dictating which band you are in with only certain bands being taught higher exam content and being allowed to sit certain courses like triple science.

1. The targets for children being used to identify those who are on target by themselves and those who aren't, even if they are performing at the same level. This leads to resources being used to support/boast the children who are off-track rather than doing the same for children who could do better but are already achieving their target. This can even go as far as:

5. The deployment of staff being informed by which children are "off-track" and those children having access to the stronger teachers.

I'm not saying that this is how it should be. In an ideal world, every child would progress at their own rate and reach their individual potential. However, this is how it's currently working in practice.

What about children who don't sit them?
If you child was removed due to currently attaining below KS2 and 70s as scaled scores, he/she will be targeted for 1s, possibly 2s (or possibly not expected to reach a grade in some subjects).

If your child didn't sit them because you removed them differently (e.g. through absence), your child will not have a targets that contribute to "Progress 8". As such, your child's grades do not count to any school statistics or how they are judged (aside from the overall attainment percentages). So as long as your child gets a 4, it doesn't actually affect the school if they do better than that. Basically, your child isn't a factor in the decisions made by those working with data at a senior level.

If your child has no data because of COVID, this is different and there is no information yet as to how progress is going to be judged for this group of children.

OP
For you, I'd encourage you to talk about scores to try and get your child to recognise it's not a pass/fail system. It's all about doing his/her best and having a score that reflects where he/her is on the learning journey. They will continue to make progress, learning more and improve, including on things they don't yet understand. And, ultimately, that's what it's about: how it can help to inform his future learning.

Lord above! - all so unnecessary - teachers know where their pupils stand in terms of progress; they know what needs doing and they are doing it; each child in my school has a clear educational plan. This is what they need; and this is what happens: and they do not need SATs to make this happen.

The SATs are there so that the government can pretend they are doing something about education. Of course they are not doing what is actually needed: proper funding for schools, proper back-up and support for schools, properly funded teacher training. Do not be fooled by all this nonsense.