Year 5 started Sats Prep this week.

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Is it usual for schools to start Sats prep this early?
Dgs in year 5 told me last week that from this week the year 6 teacher would be teaching them a couple of days per week. I didn't take much notice, just assumed it would be a getting to know the class type thing.
When I picked him up from school on Monday he told me that he had been taught by the yr 6 teacher and that they had Sats practice books and he had done 2 English and 1 maths exercise from his new books, he was quite happy about this. I'm not sure if he was taught by year 6 teacher all day or just for the morning as he was distracted by the news on the radio and we talked about one of the stories instead.
When my dd did Sats, umpteen years ago, I thought the constant Sats prep was ridiculous then, but at least it didn't start until year 6!

I can only speak of two primary schools.

My DD did her KS2 SATs last year. There were no special lessons in Y5 and, other than a 'work hard' lecture from the Y6 teacher at the start of the year, there was no special SATs-related prep until the Spring term, and even then it was low key. They did a Christmas play and a week-long residential in February, and followed a normal curriculum. No extra lessons before school, lunchtime or after school. In SATs week they were offered toast, but that was the only concession. After SATs, the full curriculum continued as before.

In the same year, at her friend's school (another one form entry state primary, a mile away) they front-loaded all the learning so they did all the SATs subjects from September to May, after which they covered the other subjects, did the school play etc (and had issues with class dynamic due to being much less focussed on learning in the last two months of primary.) From January they alternated between 'learning' week and 'testing' week, and basically drilled it all into the children for months.

Last year's SATs results weren't published on the league tables, but I'm confident the friend's school will have achieved better results - but at what cost to the children? The friend's younger sibling has since been moved from that school to a private school to avoid the tedium of SATs bashing.

No not normal. But SATs obsession by schools is fairly common

I guess it depends if this is the start of SATs prep, or whether the y6 teacher is using SATs tests as a baseline to get a feel for where they are at right now, and thus where teaching needs to be focused next year.

If they're going to prep for SATS, I prefer it to be spread out over a larger time period than to be crammed for in the last couple of months. Less stress and becomes a normal part of class work. And as PP said can give a baseline.