SATS reflections

[weareallout]

I was never anti SATS. In some ways I like that Yr6 have some form of testing at the end. My child has found yr6 a bit boring but their primary is nothing like some about if all. Friends tell me their schools little except SATs work Jan - May. I'm actually now quite annoyed that their 7 years of broad & varied education are being defined by about 4 hours of tests. The reading one sounds hard & not relevant to modern day 10-11 year olds?!?! SPAG - I've managed a degree & career without it.
Our school said it was 'low key' but mocks / booster groups / breakfast club etc all make it a big deal.
Anyone feel like it's all out of control?!?

@Shinyandnew1 those things can be learnt outside of school at home and extra curricular activities though. Of course, school is a big part learning those things but the tests tell me what I need to know, for MY kids. However, I can see how people with different sorts of kids/circumstances wouldn't be so interested in test results.

No idea how people in areas with no tests would decide on the quality of the schools there. It's never been anything I've had to think about.

No idea how people in areas with no tests would decide on the quality of the schools there. It's never been anything I've had to think about.

Perhaps these vast swathes of schools don’t need externally moderated tests at 11, because they trust the education providers to have robust assessment procedures in place. I’m sure you’ve heard of moderation?

I don’t think many (any?!) other countries have externally marked exams at primary age either.

@Shinyandnew1 if ive got the right end of the stick about it, I personally think moderation is wide open to abuse. And it doesn't tell you whether the kids have actually retained the information.

We have this issue w our dd. We try to talk sense into her, as I do not want her to be complacent and make easy mistakes. Although, I do not care about the SATs, I do not want her making mistakes for later exams!

I'm a Y6 teacher.

SATS are a total and utter waste of time. My own DC was a COVID Y6 and didn't do them. He's now in Y9 and absolutely flying.

I can tell you that this year will have crushed a lot of Y6 children and hugely dented their confidence. We spent a lot of last week comforting some very very upset children. And we are an 11+ area where most of them did it.

SATS (particularly this year's) seem designed to catch them out. To trick them. Inappropriate texts, badly worded questions and some question types we've never seen before in any previous paper.

Why? Why is it meant to be challenging? Why not focus on what they can do rather than what they can't?

It all falls off a cliff in Y7 anyway where much of the content (eg. SPAG) is never referred to again..so what was the point?!

Absolute shitshow

What do you think moderation is/looks like?

It's just not a fair test. So much hot housing and pressure on kids of 11.
I know some don't pile the pressure on but some do. Making it harder for those that don't.

Then secondary schools are judged in other subjects such as Science based on these false grades that they achieved at age 11. It's very unrealistic. It's a basic guide at best.

They could practice exams based on their own curriculum. Doesn't need to be government sourced and reported and used as a judgement for the next 5 years.

Just to add - my own DCs poor SATs results we're in no way a reflection of the education she'd received at her school. And does anybody really look at SATs results when choosing a school? I never did. I did, however, compare GCSE results of local schools.

Some DC are more prone to being stressed than others! You and the school can be as cool as a cucumber but if you have a DC that tends to get worried easily, they're going to be stressed about it no matter what.

Happens on the flip side too! The school and/or parents can give them enormous amounts of pressure but some DC just shrug it off and get on with their life.

I think the kids and parents should not be told the results of individual results. Just maybe cohort results at most. Eg 70% achieved x.

Takes all the pressure off!

@Shinyandnew1 I think it means a teacher marks the work and then the work is sent to other teachers (from the same school, or perhaps from other schools) to see if they agree that the the initial mark is fair. They would take a selection of work from various students (high, middle, low ability) to decide if the teachers marking from that school is up to scratch/correct or not.

The problem would be not every teacher would be honest and not every child's work could be moderated because of time constraints. That's how I understand it anyway.

I think parents should absolutely be told. Kids should not be told, but parents should be aware of how their dc are doing. At least I like to know how my dc are doing. I was annoyed after the 11+ that we never get to find out their scores.

As if the parents won't tell their kids the results...?

Why do you need to know the results when it's supposed to be measure of the school and not the child? That's what your termly reports are for.

Seriously, if every child did anonymous standardised testing and only the school found out the general results etc then you'd have less pressure from everywhere, kids wouldn't be tutored through them, and it would probably be a fairer reflection of what is actually going on.

There would be parents applying to find out their child's score, which by rights they'd have to be told. Unless all papers were anonymous, and then that would take away the tracking of progress.

We do termly standardised tests to track progress and they are hard. SATS are on a different level.
I work in a school with high levels of deprivation/EAL for our core children but 40% of our cohort is highly transient children of PHD students from oversees that don't speak English. No tutoring, no 11+, same budget as other schools and we are all judged the same. Even if we had the same 30 children from reception all the way to Y6 it's would be a hard slog getting them to meet the expectation given their low starting points (none of ours enter Rec at expectation) but we are in the situation that only 1/3 of our Y6 were even here in Rec.
So how do SATS judge our teaching?

As a secondary teacher I hate SATS. Children arrive in my classroom with inflated grades that stick with them until they sit GCSE's. We're then judged to have failed this child when they don't achieve the grade their SATS say they should.
We have had numerous children through with "good" SATS results who are illiterate and innumerate.
Something is not adding up!

This is before the stress that some children are put through in their last year of primary to achieve well in tests that actually should just be a measure of how well their teaching has been.

We have several split primaries here.
So infant school: reception - year 2.
Juniors: year 3-6z

Some areas have middle school systems so three tiers but different years to middle as they span into secondary years.

Lots of independent schools don't do SATs so how would you know with them?

As for quality of education? Well you've only got tests in 3 subject areas. What about the quality of education in history, music, art, computing, geography, etc? Are those subjects irrelevant?

No pressure from DS primary. But DS puts so much pressure on himself, he's diligent and hard working, but I'm sure he's dyslexic. He came out in tears with both English papers...no pressure from home either.
He's good at maths, so was happy with those papers.
Tests are fine, it's good to have a go at being challenged BUT they should NOT be used as a predictor for GCSEs. Children develop at different rates the 10/11 year old me was academically incompetent....and yet I have two good degrees, a number of my peers, some of whom were very good academically at primary, flunked at secondary, or at A level/ degree level.
Exams automatically discriminate against anyone with dyslexia (and some other types of SEN).
DS will struggle academically, yet he's extremely bright, has a phenomenal vocabulary, quick witted, has a huge general knowledge base, but on paper, quite honestly he's dreadful! Approximately 1 in 5 children have dyslexia, yet it's really not considered as SEN, and these are the children who are failed massively by our educational systems.

@SamPoodle123 Yes it can tricky to navigate. I'm sure she will find everything more challenging in secondary. Is she an academic scholar at G and L?

Their individual progress can be tracked in other ways, just as it is throughout the year without SATS

Anonymous standardised testing would solve a lot of problems.

Children arrive in my classroom with inflated grades that stick with them until they sit GCSE's.

Inflated how? I haven’t even seen my class’s papers apart from a quick glance over their shoulder when they did them. How are externally marked grades inflated, exactly?

The grammar test is too long and too boring. The working party who devised the grammar curriculum was supposed to write a KS3 grammar curriculum also but ran out of time and money. It’s pointless.

The reading test does not test reading, it tests how many questions can be answered in 60 minutes.

The Maths curriculum is unnecessarily crammed and too difficult- my ds’s Maths GCSE had lots of the same content last year and my children can answer many GCSE questions now.

The whole system is shit and gets in the way of actual teaching and learning, however determined schools are that it should not. I am looking forward to teaching meaningful lessons at less than 90 miles an hour. Poor kids.

And GCSEs is a plural and does not require an apostrophe, btw.

@TeacherMcTeacherface
This, 100%.
Especially the lack of SPAG requirements at high schools. Why are we killing ourselves trying to teach the subjunctive? Or progressive verbs? Or the difference between an expanded noun phrase and a fronted adverbial? I could go on...

There is a huge divide in abilities and circumstances across the country. If you're an educated person with a bright child, you may not be able to contemplate how low the ability levels are for some of our pupils. SATs in Year 6 just detract from focusing on what those disadvantaged children actually need, which is three more terms of targeted interventions filling the basic gaps, not two terms of trying to prepare them for tests for which they are not developmentally ready. The remainder of the summer term is already taken up with transition etc and by that point they have nothing left to give.

As for the more able, the curriculum is overflowing with higher-level thinking opportunities, or at least it would be if there were time to enjoy it instead of cramming everything into two terms. The writing objectives for Year 6 would challenge an adult - plenty of opportunity for bright children to shine.

People need to listen - our education system at primary level is in a total mess after years of meddling from people who don't understand that the majority of pupils are not 11+ material. It's an elite standard - by definition, surely it stands to reason that most pupils are not there. This year, as evidenced across social media, in many cases even the more able struggled with the reading. It didn't get progressively harder - the middle text is what took all the time. The third text was more straightforward but so many didn't get to it, or if they did, were so exhausted or stressed that they overthought the quesions.

It has to stop. Reviewing the value and delivery of these tests isn't about lowering standards -it's about ensuring that children can love their learning and feel motivated to be the best they can.

You’re right about the writing, not many adults could routinely write at the standard required. This again drops off at secondary school. The GCSE pieces showcased at my son’s school on open evening were not at that standard in terms of punctuation and all of my ds’s work from Y7-9 was completed exclusively on iPads. After T9, they decided to ditch them as standards in presentation had somehow slipped 🙄🙄Go figure!

@Feenie You're so right! That has been my experience with my son too.
I remember him being given grammar homework where the teacher had written "would of".