SATS- is there any benefit for the child?

[MinnieMountain]

DS is in year 5. His teachers have already talked about SATS preparation. We told him that we won’t be making him do any extra work as there’s no benefit to him and he will be assessed by his secondary when he starts.

He told the TA this yesterday and she said that he must do the extra work as it will help him at secondary. Will it?

I attended independent schools. From infant school age we were sat internal school exams twice a year. Every Christmas and summer we were given experience of sitting longer tests in exam conditions, I never did any SATs. Surely children could receive the benefits of revising for exams, experiencing exam conditions, learning how to manage when tests do not go well and how to avoid common mistakes without the results of tests they take aged 10 affecting their GCSE predicted grades.

I'm a bit worried about what I'm reading here. So if a child does 'badly' in SATs, then their expected grades for GCSEs (5 years later) will be low... added to this, their secondary teachers will then not expect much of them and therefore won't provide them with intervention or support to do better than expected.? They're only pushed if their SATs mark was high? Is that right or have I misunderstood?

How does this work with a progress 8 score .. surely you want to be giving a lot of support to those kids whose SATs marks were low helping them to achieve better-than-expected grades in order for the school to demonstrate progress?

Equally, what happens if a student doesn't sit SATs? My DC didn't sit them as we were overseas.

I think SAT measure how well the school is performing and indicates whether a child is on target. I think they are useful measure. It something I looked at when looking at schools. I have noticed that since covid scores have dropped.

I find it a bit shocking to find out that there is all this secret pigeonholing going on. I knew there were sats and the sats scores were used for setting when they go to high school....I didn't know that that then turned at age 10 into predictor for gcse, how do you find out what the numbers given as sats results translate to at gcse?
I have definitely seen in one of my DC an unwillingness to push them even when they have responded well to particular subjects at secondary, so they then have been placed in a lower set inspite of previous good results and friends with much lower results at secondary in the subjects have been placed in higher sets ....and suprise suprise, my dcs marks have significantly declined in those subjects and are now aligned with this lower sets marks and the school doesn't seem to care.

And some DC are tutored fir SATs etc so throws it all

Regarding investing in the promotion of better than expected progress, this is desireable if others are already making expected progress. If they aren't, it often falls by the wayside as resources are finite.

For example:
Child A, B and C are all on track to get a 5.
Based on their KS2 results:
Child A is supposed to be on track for a 5.
Child B is supposed to be on track for a 3/4.
Child C is supposed to be on track for a 6/7.
Let's say that you have the resources available to give extra support to one of these children (intervention, mentoring, etc.). You'd examine the data, "bank" Child B as already achieving over their target, keep an eye on Child A and allocate the resources to Child C to try to reduce the chance of a negative progress score.
In the end, Child A gets that 5 after being monitored and nudged, Child B gets a 4 or a 5 after being "banked" and Child C gets the 6 after receiving specific support.

Children who don't sit their KS2 exams do not have a baseline measure and so do not count towards the secondary school's progress scores. As such, it doesn't matter if they contribute a positive or negative progress score. In a year where everyone missed (i.e. a pandemic year), this doesn't matter as no-one has a baseline so no progress measures will be made (as we are seeing with this year's Y6 cohort). But in a year where everyone else does have that baseline score, it can matter.

It shouldn’t matter as any good senior school will retest on a regular basis and particularly when the pupils start year 7.

However, those internal exams have absolutely no impact on how progress is measured for the secondary school nor how their progress is judged by organisations like their trust or Ofsted. Those exams are for school information alone.

Imo schools/education need to raise awareness of exactly how this can impact a child's progression in the way that @Iamnotthe1 has done so that people truly understand the consequences of not doing their best at KS2. I think at the moment it is very secret squirrel and hidden in education-speak

Doing nothing but maths and English should be a thing of the past - Ofsted essentially didn't used to inspect foundation subjects but now schools have deep dives into history, art etc. We are much more stressed about this part of the inspection than maths or English! Primaries are expected to have a broad and balanced curriculum and the curriculum is so enormous there really is no time for maths and English in an afternoon now.

In terms of spending a year prepping for SATS, much of Y6 is spent covering the Y6 curriculum. Yes children practise SATS and exam technique but it would be ridiculous not to do so. I don't really understand why primaries are criticised for ensuring their pupils pass the tests they are required to sit. Ultimately you need the knowledge to pass them; if you haven't learnt the curriculum no amount of exam practice will help you.

In terms of the OP's question, there shouldn't be too much pressure but a lot of primary children actually quite like assessment weeks and like to know they've done well. It's good to have some ownership over your learning. The MTC in Y4 has provided much more motivation to properly learn times tables for example. That undoubtedly helps children in UKS2.

In good schools, dc are assessed for progress as they go along or dc would never move sets! Up or down! Therefore sats results don’t really affect GCSE outcomes in that predictions are not outcomes! The most important aspect of any school is quality of teaching. Many dc can improve with great teaching and not do as well with poor teaching. Sats is a snapshot but not the end result.

He's going to have to do exams for the rest of his academic life, so it's a great chance to make a start in teaching him that he should do his best, but it's not the end of the world or anything worse getting really stressed over. So yeah, he needs to do his best.

What's generated from the SATs isn't just a prediction. It's what's used to compare progress and judge whether a teacher/department/school has made less than, around or more than expected/average progress with their students. I have seen department heads have their jobs at risk because of progress 8 scores. I've seen teachers denied progression because of progress 8 scores. I've seen secondary school's Ofsted grading influenced heavily by negative progress 8 scores.

Quality of teaching does matter most, completely agree. However, when the quality of the teacher assigned by those in charge to teach your child's class can be influenced by the children's SATs-based expected targets and by how on track, off track or exceeding the children are, these "snapshots" can have long-lasting consequences.

I'm not saying that this is how it should be (though accountability is needed because the removal of the KS3 SATs saw an immediate drop in the quality and impact of KS3 teaching and learning). But I am saying that this is, in practice, how it is in the vast majority of schools so it does matter. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous.

I don’t see sats as not mattering but I do think great teaching matters more. I also know the dc not reaching expected are the most difficult to get good progress from. Often schools are criticised for not doing enough for these dc.

It’s not really fair to lump the woes of teacher appraisal on dc when they take sats. I do accept there can be occasional consequences but dc deserve to take the sats for their own benefit and that of their existing school. Not future teachers they have never met.

Great teaching does matter more. But I was saying that your results and subsequent targets/progress may determine whether you get great teachers assigned to teach you.

I also didn't say that the woes are lumped on the kids. I'm saying that the kids will experience the consequences of it. They will be entirely unaware of it, as are most parents and a lot of teachers, but it absolutely can be the reason why the teacher is told to focus on child a, b and c rather than child x, y and z. Or why child a, b and c have access to additional revision sessions, etc. They aren't doing their best for their future teachers: they are doing their best for their future selves so that they have the best chance of reaching their potential at GCSE.

I may be misunderstanding previous comments but are some people saying SATS are used to predict GCSE outcome, and some people are saying they are not? In state schools that is, I realise it’s irrelevant in private schools. Whenever I ask anyone in the sector (school governor friends, teacher friends) they all say it’s purely for the schools and not for the pupils.

Paddingtonthebear

Many teachers are unaware of how this data is used as it's not included as part of their role. It's often something only looked at by data managers and senior leaders. Sometimes, those that are aware chose not to share this with parents for a multitude of reasons.

The end of KS2 assessments (both SATs and the teacher assessment for writing) are used as the baseline for measuring progress between that point in Y6 and GCSE. Schools/teachers do not get a choice about this as it's a measure done to them rather than by them. This is called Progress 8 and it is one of the main measures used to judge the effectiveness of a secondary school. Each pupil has a specific dataset and this is used to compare them to other pupils and see whether they have progressed at the expected level, better or worse.

Because this measure can significantly affect secondary schools, a number of decisions made by senior leaders typically factor these datasets into their decision making process. This can include decisions on:

• setting and streaming,
• teacher allocation,
• access to support / intervention,
• the allocation of limited resources,
• whether a child has access to specific content (e.g. content needed for the higher papers or triple science).
• a number of other things.

So it's not for the child in terms of them not including it on their CVs or anything like that but it absolutely can determine a number of things about their journey through secondary school which, in turn, affects GCSE outcomes.

The scary thing is, until now KS1 SATS data had a similar impact on how primaries are graded by Ofsted. Getting children from expected to expected is where the most pressure is. So those predicted GCSE grades are not only impacted by how children do at 11 but how they do at 6.

To be fair, most parents don’t want dc to slip backwards.

Not quite. The tests themselves were just for information for the teacher who then gave each child an assessed grade based on the whole child. If a child under-performed on the specific exams, the teacher could balance that out with evidence from their books and show that the child was typically stronger than that.

But, yes, the progress made from the teacher assessments in Y2 to the exams in Y6 was measured like this for judging primaries (imo, rightly).

I took mine out. All 3 are very high achievers but I was resentful at the school prepping for them from the January onwards. What a waste of their last 2 terms at primary. School wrote to me and HT called but I stood my ground. I would happily have let them sit them had their school resisted obsessive prepping and simply did a couple of familiarisation sessions but I felt they’d stolen my DC’s education by wasting months practising.

The prepping instead of continuing with new learning isn’t unusual unfortunately. In my opinion, a sign of a poorly performing school/bad planning by teachers.

The thing is, if he's top set already, what extra work is he going to do? DD1 has done her first set of mocks, there was a boy in her class who got 105/110 across the three maths papers. No-one in their right mind would suggest he needs to do any extra work!

I'd just say yes if he struggles with anything of course you'll help him. But as there's no suggestion he's struggling now any extra work is probably unnecessary.

Actually this is not necessarily true. It can be very helpful to tell your children that sometimes in life you have to do stuff that is pointless and useless... and that this happens in education too. Children are smart they will see what is pointless. But encouraging a love of learning is in my view much more important and sadly in my experience schools do not always help with this. I say this as a teacher too!

Surely you can only prep if you've actually finished the curriculum though?