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?!?

@SamPoodle123 They often like to get the admissions process out of the way before they're happy to give out results. Now is probably a better time to ask.

@TeacherMcTeacherface - but what’s wrong with hard? It’s better than the current thinking that everyone’s a winner and we all get a certificate at sports day. Life’s simply not like that. If schools have taught what they’re meant to correctly, then many children would not have found the tests hard. And just because something is hard, it doesn’t mean it’s insurmountable. Not everything comes easily. Putting in effort and having to think about an answer isn’t ‘hard’, it’s concentrating and then writing down an answer. That answer may well be correct!

Parts of my job are hard, doesn’t mean I don’t do it well. All the fuss around the tests being hard feeds directly into the next snowflake generation - children can’t possibly be seen to fail, rather ‘the tests were too difficult’. Carry that through to its natural conclusion and every appraisal at work is wrong because the boss wasn’t kind - rather than people accepting that they may play their own part in their success.

Tests have been openly available online for years. Parents had the opportunity to practice with their children, get them used to the style and test techniques, teach them to move to the next question if they got stuck. Take the reading test - 3x 20 minute sections. Why didn’t some children know to move on to the next section of the test after 20 minutes? That’s lack of prep to me and on both teachers and parents.

If schools have taught what they’re meant to correctly, then many children would not have found the test

That simply is not true. The thresholds are set after the papers are marked. There are always going to be children who don’t meet the standard.

And the verb you intended to use is spelt ‘practise’, btw. It’s a Y6 spelling pattern. Maybe your school didn’t teach what they were meant to. Are you a failure too?

Of course children are taught to move on if stuck. The more able children are taught that the final section is generally tougher but has more marks available so many will tackle that first, some children are taught that they do better on the fiction than the non fiction, so start with that one. The less able children are aware that the first section is GENERALLY easier than the other two so they need to try to get those questions right as they haven't a cat in hells chance of answering the three mark questions at the end. None of that mitigates against themes that the majority of our children have no experience of, extracts from obscure newspapers that they won't have come across, vocabulary well above the experience of the majority of pupils, word counts that stretch even the most able, questions couched in obscure and unclear ways such that even the adults struggle to understand what the point is. I have a class where half passed the 11+, so they are not dullards or slow, but even they struggled this year. Our normal pass rate is around 80% so we clearly teach the children what they are expected to know. It doesn't make the tests fair or valid for everyone.

The answer to your question, btw, is that the questions on section 2 took so long to answer that many children didn’t even get to section 3 or were too upset and confused by the time they got there. The texts were uneven in question distribution. The texts and questions increase in difficulty, and the children know that. If they had moved onto too early, they’d have only missed out easier questions that were more closely matched to their reading comprehension ability, in favour or harder ones that they may not have been able to answer.

They were taught test technique. Your suggested technique would not have served them well.

@Feenie And the verb you intended to use is spelt ‘practise’, btw. It’s a Y6 spelling pattern. Maybe your school didn’t teach what they were meant to. Are you a failure too?
😂😂That's what I was going to say!

@Cloud9Super Why didn’t some children know to move on to the next section of the test after 20 minutes? That’s lack of prep to me and on both teachers and parents.
To me, that's a lack of awareness of just some of the difficulties we face, when you have so many parents, in our case, saying the tests don't matter and it's just for the school etc. Of course we tell them to move on, but you can't divide a reading paper neatly into three equal parts! Especially when the second extract is impenetrable and full of trick questions.

Expecting children to move on after 20 minutes means expecting them to be able to tell the time. Yes they should be able to, but many struggle. In a stressful situation, their ability to count on 20 minutes would be even worse. It's hard if you're of even average intelligence to understand just how low ability some children are. Bare in mind some children leave reception writing several sentences together, while some have only just learned their colours and how to use the toilet. That gap generally remains, or widens, throughout school.

And to the pp obsessed with teachers unable to moderate honestly, that's exactly what we do with writing now. The writing SAT no longer exists. The standard of Y6 writing now is undoubtedly higher than when it did.

The standard of Y6 writing now is undoubtedly higher than when it did.

Absolutely right! I can’t now get over the craziness of assessing a child’s writing based on one fascinating task such…. The Queue 🙄 I used to have to apply for so many re-marks in those days that our percentages invariably went up around 10% most years. One year was so dire that I appeared in a TES article about it, doing a cross face with a stack of papers in my arms 🤣🤣

I remember " The Queue"! Lord, that was tedious😭

Loved the Miptor though!
And who remembers Pip Davenport?

@Feenie - people in glass houses and all that 🤔 Maybe check what you’re quoting before picking others up on their perceived mistakes…

Meh, my phone mouse slipped when quoting. 🤷‍♀️ They don’t teach that in Y6! You still need to spell at least at the level of an 11 year old if you are going to criticise teaching to maintain any kind of credibility!

How about the whole fucking year of teaching and assessment that goes on? Half termly writing assessments, regular internal and external moderation, teacher judgement? And that's not the half of it.
You're a damn fool.

The Miptor was a rare exception of an interesting task, true. 😁

When children are taking GCSEs or other qualifications there is a point to them learning some exam techniques. When they are just doing pointless tests there is not.

Do you think the grade boundaries for reading will be lower than the last few years?

This is why strikes won't work. Because we're faced with the onslaught of parents' opinions such as this one, and not enough support. 🙄 😔

Gosh.
But actually you've (possibly unwittingly) summed up everything that is wrong with our educational system.
No understanding of SEN☑️
No understanding of child psychology ☑️
No understanding of children from complex families / where English is a 2nd or 3rd language/ where families are juggling full time working parents or single parents and stressing about paying the next bill, they might have enough energy and time to get their dc to do their homework, but most parents are not going to be tutoring for the SATs (11+ quite possibly...but that's a different argument)☑️
No understanding that education system is failing any child who is not of an academic mould☑️
No understanding that a child failing doesn't 'produce' a 'snowflake' <<< you'll find 'snowflakes' are universal, especially in winter, and nothing to do with educational attainment>>>

I don’t want a system that gives everyone a medal, I do want a system that doesn’t exclude disabled children like my daughter.

Exactly - there is no need for medals at all. Each child needs to work to their best ability and have teachers free from governmental straitjackets who can help them achieve that. And SATs contribute nothing at all to this aim.

100% agree. I want a system which fits each and every child. Not our current system where the child has to fit. As an aside I'd like to do without prizes altogether .... but that won't go down well on here!

Surely there has to be. Someone said in 2016 53% got expected. I'm getting more & more annoyed about the reading test.
To me the test texts are very old and not relevant to the world DC now lived in.
More suited to expensive white prep schools

I very much doubt that the grade boundaries will change. They have gone up and up over the years. There was a definite ramping up of the standard across the papers as a whole and a definite agenda. I think it will be ‘look at these lazy, feckless, striking teachers and how they have failed children - we are just the party who can sort this out in the coming election year.”

You’d have to hope that most of the electorate would realise they created this mess over 13 years and give them the heave ho.

53% was across all three subjects in 2016 - it was 66% in Reading in 2016 and 75% in 2022.

Much as I hope you are right, as you can see from this thread it will all be the fault of " teachers who can't even teach a child to move on when stuck"