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?!?

I do agree if parents tell their children not to worry or be stressed and that SATs are stupid it does invariably make them more stressful for their children and doesn't help, sometimes it is the opposite though and schools pile the pressure on (probably because of the targets they have and its hard to find a balance). Unless there are additional needs I personally don't think exposing children to stress in this manner is bad, it teaches some important skills and it can be done in an age appropriate way. I don't see why children are crying because some questions were super hard, some should be to stretch the gifted children and that's okay and they should be taught that it's fine; it will happen throughout life that there are things we can't do and that's healthy.

I have more issue with the content of the tests and the irrelevance in many cases to real life tbh.

Have you met this government?

Glad they got rid of the year 9 SATs. Why not the year 6?

This is the last year for the Year 2 sats as well.

what did my year 6 take from SATS? well, a bit of a mixed picture.

Stressed beforehand and couldn’t sleep a night or two, no problems during the week itself with these things.

She found the English SATS ‘fine’ & the verbal reasoning and one other I can’t recall… ‘impossible’ so she didn’t bother doing much in that one apparently. Further cementing her view that she is poor at Maths which is unhelpful!

She’s in the top few of her class for English, top third for Maths in a middle class primary.

School claim it’s not important yet had a one off breakfast club… plus fun activities once the exams had finished.

so I feel like at least the school are trying to mitigate the impact on the students?

I think some form of exam - fine, but to spread across a whole week seems a bit OTT.

There is no verbal reasoning. Did she mean the Maths Reasoning paper? There are two of those. One was difficult and one was fine.

Someone earlier commented that parents don't judge schools by SATs. OMG they so do. And league tables.
In Trafford the schools do very very well but it's also a grammar area with big areas that are very middle class / affluent. People rave over primary results.. ignoring the huge tutor industry.

@Floralie Teachers and pupils have been done dirty by the periodic introduction of arbitrary targets which don't account for the progression of individuals but rather count anything below x as bad, the underfunding of schools and the ridiculous changes brought in by people who have evidently not set foot in a state school for many years if ever. Some of the stuff DC does at primary school is just wild and pointless, not sure what's going on but we should all be concerned.

Yessssss! It is all of this. If parents don't know why they should be concerned by now, then they have their heads in the sand or are refusing to listen.

@TeacherMcTeacherface Honestly!! It's madness.

I don't think they do it to just piss off the profession. It stinks of someone at the DfE who remembers what they did in the 1950s and therefore is what modern kids 'should' know.

Which is nonsense and totally unsuitable for a very different world.

I blame Gove.

So do I - that's when the curriculum became unmanageable, totally unrealistic and crushing in its worthy ideals.

@Feenie Because, like many people, they think that because they went to school once upon a time, they are in a perfect position to tell people who work in schools how to run them.

Yes - so ignorant and naive.

@Dacadactyl No, I'm not buying it. Doesn't stand to reason.

So what exactly has this government done that does stand to reason? Grant Shapps as Secretary of State for Transport? Hmm - that went well.
Gavin Williamson CBE, Education Secretary - in charge of the 2020 shitshow of GCSE results? Did that stand to reason?
The problem is that the government is so appallingly incompetent at every level that it actually isn't possible to believe how bad things are - because it doesn't stand to reason that the people in charge would be so completely inept...unless you are trying to work in the ensuing maelstrom on a daily basis.

@Feenie Although I did think that the reading test was bordering on verbal reasoning with all the twists and turns of wording in those questions!

I would not share the results with my dc if they were so sensitive and anxious about it. And I would want to know because that is what I am used to growing up. I like to see a number or a letter grade not Expecting or GDS.

Which reasoning was harder?

Paper 2. Paper 3 the next day was ok.

No, they do not have academic scholarships at G&L. They only have music scholarships at 11+ and music and art at 16+. If she had an academic scholarship, it would def be a lot more pressure to keep up the grades! She is very motivated to do well in secondary. But she has lost all interest at her current school. I am trying to think of how to help her have a great start. She is up for doing a creative writing class or other stuff outside of school.

Ah I see. Must just be schools like Emanuel, FH, KGS etc which do them then.

SATs prep this year including 3 sets of mock SATs have pushed my autistic dd into a mental health crisis. She is very bright, but feels like an utter failure.

I hate SATs.

Putney has academic scholarship as well. Not sure where else. I wonder if Latymer has.

When will the first news's be of national picture re scores?

Results are reported to schools on Tuesday 11th July

How is she going to manage in secondary school where there are tests weekly

Yes, exactly this. It is important to be able to cope with not being able to do something or being the best at things. It is okay. Try your best, but its okay if you do not get the highest score. Just see what you can do.

My kids primary piled on the sats pressure from Easter. Dd2 had already been worrying about them for two years. That is ridiculous.

They're relieved they're over.

Having worked in a secondary school, I wish primary schools were better able to ensure every child was able to read, write and had a good grasp of basic mathematical concepts. Unfortunately a lot slip through the net and the knock on effect can have repercussions for life.

@bruffin - if there are tests weekly in a secondary school, when are they teaching?

The secondary school I worked in had spaces retrieval, a knowledge check starter for most lessons. Tests were at the end of a topic or end of term.

The focus is far less stressful in secondary school until they start the push towards GCSEs. But ime, the sats process is unnecessarily 'hot housing' children to ensure they pass the test and give the school a good score. I've not known our secondary schools locally rely on sats for setting because the variation between scores and actual ability can be vast. They do their own assessments once the children are settled into year 7.

They have far more subjects in secondary so one week may be maths another week may be language, then geography, sometimes two in a week
DS has 2 languages in year 7 and had weekly test on words, he was top set but dyslexic so expected to score highly in languages, but it was an issue I had to see SENCO about
Then there is an end of year test in all subjects.
This was an ordinary comp not a particular high performance environment.

@Feenie I assume before then they'll release some headline figures across nation?

On or around then - they don’t report until results are back in schools.