So what exactly are optioal sats??

[alfielooloo]

We have received the Summer Curriculum letter for DS1 (year 3) today & it mentions the Optional Sats in 3 weeks time Does anyone know what these are? Are they like last years Sats only done through the School & not official?? We had Parents evening only a few weeks ago & it wasn't mentioned then.
Can anyone enlighten me please.
TA

Optional Sats even

Optional SATs are tests for reading, writing, spelling and maths that are designed for Y3, Y4 and Y5. They are marked internally by the teacher or co-ordinator. They are similar in design to the Y2 SATs but are administered like the Y6 SATs (so, unlike Y2 ones, they are done in silence and timed strictly, with little preparation). They are supposed to give a snapshot of achievement for each year group, enabling the school to monitor progress.

A word of warning - Y3 optional SATs are notorious for giving children a lower level than they achieved in Y2. Doesn't mean children haven't made progress, just that the benchmarks aren't the same (daft, I know, but there you are...).

It shouldn't cause too much stress as long as the school does them sensitively, and you should get the results with the end of year report. HTH

Many LEAs get them marked externally now but the data is used internally only and not published

'optional' sats are set by the school in every year after their yr2 ones, and for some reason still become COMPULSARY(sp?)

I wish for mine to never do them, as I am very much against somehting that has nothing to do with the child in general, everything to do with how the schools 'train' their pupils, and everything to do with stressing them out!!!!!

and yet.......they still have to do them, even if I tell the school otherwise and suddenly have 'poorly' kiddies that week.....as they have to do them when they get back into school.....

oh, and then, they get a lower result (as is apparently expected as they go from having their sat's into a new key stage and therfore new teaching methods, especially if they have aslo changed school), and in the case of DD3, get put onto IEP as she now cannot apparently read (she could and can, t'was a new reading scheme introduced that day, and without warning, which threw her and she refused to read completely....she has OCD issues at school), which was an utter waste of time and rescources and they took over 1yr to apologise to her or me (they did just last week!)

the word 'optional' is a smoke screen btw

Yes, 'optional' for the school, not for the pupils!

not even 'optional' for the school tbh

Ah, OK. I thought schools could choose whether to do them or not. My boys seem to have some form of test every week - NFER, practice SATs, optional SATs, real SATS...

In theory, they can chose - they chose to do them...

Yes, schools can choose whether to do them, but the more that do, the greater the pressure on others to do them too, so there's a comparison. Schools are under huge pressure to keep tabs on the supposed progress children are making (on paper), and to identify any who are "stuck" at a sub-level, so the argument is that these tests help to keep everyone on track. But GladBag is absolutely right, the Year 3 ones are a glitch in the system.

Of course they are optional for the school. My school refuses to dot hem adn we use highly analytical teacher assessment instead.
They are called optional because its not the law to do them. We dont do them - maybe other schools should start being a bit braver adn brushing up their teacher assessments.

Sorry so long since posting, had to take DS1 to cubs last night, first time for him, I could have cried when he did his salute at the end, he didn't know how many fingers to use & looked a bit like Russ Abbott ( am I showing my age with Russ Abbott?)
I don't know if these optional sats are something that our school have only recently started doing as we failed the ofsted a couple of years ago & one of their failures was not tracking the progress of each child adequately. I still think we should have been told about them on parents evening though.

Thanks everyone.

re the lower levels that some children get in year 3 than in year 2, the year 2 school results have to be sent of to education departments (local and government) so schools are more or less told that they should get a certain percentage of level 3. For the optional sats it does not matter outside the school what the results are so may be a truer picture of the childs ability (was told this last summer for DS)

This year the more able yr 2 children are having booster lessons to make sure they get level 3 (no doubt it will be dropped as soon as they achieve it)

oldwomanwholivedinashoe - can I just pick up on what you say about 'brushing up on teacher assessments'? I dread to ask to be honest, but you seem to imply that teachers do not know what they are doing.

well to be honest a lot of teachers at my school didnt but they do now! Its taken 2 years of really hard work but now ALL classroom teachers can sub level really accurately adn we're doing really well. I think teachers need specific training in this area fromt heir LEA and advisors. Its not an easy thing to do. the government have just released a document called APP for maths adn are in the process of releasing APP for Literacy. We have done so much work on teachers assessments that when we saw APP for maths we thought it fitted in nicely with what we were already doing but to a lot of schools teacher assessment in this way is new.

My dc's school always done optional SATS, they are fine and they don't really know they're doing them. No more than weekly maths/english tests.

Only ones that they do stress about are in Y6

They shouldn't be stressing about any of them really. They are more to do with progress and ensuring progress for teachers information than anything else. In my school we don't tellt eh parents what they got any assessments unless they spe4cifically ask to see the paper work. we talk about progress adn expectation.

My boys' school does optional SATs, but we've never been notified of them in advance, and it's very low-key.

Usually about half way through the week one of the boys will mention they've been having some tests during the week