Boycotting SATS

[MumofChimp]

We’re taking our 11 year old on holiday during SATS week, as that break is more valuable to him than sitting in a classroom completing tests that say nothing about him and are just used to rank schools. Much of his Y6 curriculum has been wasted, doing practice tests that he’s found tedious. He’s an anxious boy who really struggled emotionally with the pressure of the Kent Test and this is a step too far for him. I always said that, if we had the opportunity, we’d boycott and - yes! - we have the opportunity. Anyway, the point of this post is, is anyone else boycotting and how are you going about informing the school? I’m not interested in counter-arguments; I’m an ex-secondary teacher and I know that the results are of little use for progression.

We have no data for whether or not those children do fine or even attain in line with where they were on track to achieve. Their progress data is simply not gathered.

As has already been explained on this thread, that missing data affects multiple aspects of the child's secondary school experience in ways that parents and many teachers wouldn't actually see.

The DfE are sending out the Y2 SATs to all schools unless individual schools have chosen to opt out. No official data is being gathered (and the official data didn't come from their exams anyway - it was teacher assessment in Y2).

Many dc in private schools do tests to get into senior schools. They are more stressful than sats! More depends on them so of course many prep schools don’t bother with sats. They don’t need to. Plenty of other exams to sit and some dc will sit for 5 schools.

1 Zero national data available for these pupils so you’re purely referencing individual anecdotes. You can’t possibly know how they all get on as a cohort as nobody is tracking them.
2 if they’ve done private primary, they have parents who are prepared to invest financially in their education so probably go on to have private tuition to help at GCSE, replacing the intervention at school they’re not going to be prioritised for.

It’s not the same at all.

I honestly think you're more in control of his fears and anxiety than you give yourself credit for!

I saw the SATs as nothing to worry about but valuable for the kids to get used to exams. I painted them to the kids as a way for the school to show how good their teacher was but for them, it was nothing for them to worry about. I told them to just go in and enjoy the 'different' day! They would go in and have new exam booklets, newly sharpened pencils, tables laid out in an exam way. I made it sound exciting!

They have loved exams ever since and even now, doing their GCSEs, they really don't seem to feel any stress about them!

I honestly think you're more in control of his fears and anxiety than you give yourself credit for!

I totally agree with this.

What was the point of this thread? You seem to have an answer for everything OP? Your original question was around how other boycotters will be informing the school. But you had already researched that a holiday was the best way to create the absence.