Y6 maths support

[MammaGnomes]

I've always always always said that SATS don't matter and that it's a reflection of the school not the child, backed up I must add by my DD yr6 teacher at the beginning of term chat.

However, she's come home tonight with 16/40 on her MA assessment. She HATES TTRS so more practice there isn't the answer. Any suggestions for additional support we can do at home? Is a tutor OTT?

At her first choice high school they set for maths and science based off SATS and are mixed ability for everything else.
She's very bright academically in other areas, reaching greater depths last year for reading, writing, French & humanities. I'm worried that if her maths doesn't improve she'll end up in bottom sets which won't be a true reflection of her levels.

She's always struggled with maths and I feel guilty now for not supporting her with it earlier.

What does she struggle with? Y6 maths is incredibly hard without a secure base of timetables, which is why school is pushing ttrs.

@EskSmith all of it I think but mainly TT.

mine didn’t like ttrs but did enjoy hit the button. An online game. I just made them do 10 minutes every morning before school. Choose one times table a week and do it firstly in order, then out of order and then division facts until it is totally secure.

I also got an app called squeebles.

She absolutely must know her times tables before the end of primary school. She ought to have known them before year 5. It matters a lot.

Thanks @Pinkmoonshine I'll have a look at those apps too

Some children just don’t get on with TTRS whilst others love it. Last year, one of my Y4 boys was so quick it was amazing to watch, but in his everyday maths he was very average, and in an arithmetic assessment rarely got 50%.
Go back to basics - flash cards, oral chanting, TT songs. Completing TT grids where some of the answers are already there, multiplication number lines to complete / reorder / find the missing numbers. Twinkl has lots of resources.

Can she bring the test home so you can see where she went wrong? You can probably spot a few issues & maybe work on one at a time e.g. does she understand how to add fractions? We did that every week. Asked him to see if he could spot errors & correct them first & then help him.

Ds was getting about that score in yr5 and by end of yr 6 36/40 or more but his primary school was rubbish we paid for tutoring which he loved

Also is she setting her work out clearly so she can read the answers when she's done the sums and does she know how to do a quick sense check of each answer? So if the sum is adding 2 numbers which are less than100 the answer won't be more than 1000 so if it is she knows to look at it again?

@Iizzyb I thought about asking for the test to have a look at I'll email school and see if she can bring it home.

Did you start the tutoring in y6? I want her to enjoy maths at the moment she really doesn't.

Year 6 SATs do matter beyond primary and are not simply a reflection of the school. I am surprised your child’s teacher said that.

The sets in secondary are a clear reflection of their ability at that time especially if she's getting 16/40

That's the ability she's at

You can't sugar coat the facts

They're good at some things but not others

With maths she just needs to go through the process of understanding the question and how to get to the answer

It's just formulas really you need to get your head around

She can do it it's just not that interesting for everyone

Once she gets her head around it by sitting down with you till she gets it she'll be fine

It's like learning a language really

Absolutely do this

Till she gets it

She will get it eventually

She needs to put the time in at the beginning

The teacher should be going through the answers and the process of how they got to the answers

They should be given an answer sheet so they can figure out themselves how to get to the answers

They teach maths better in secondary school because of course they'll have a whole class dedicated to it

She must never not ask if she has no idea in secondary school even if it's after class

Most DC are to embarrassed to ask or the lesson flies by too quickly

Time needs to be taken to go through the whole question and answer and figure it out so they don't get left behind

Yeah, it turns out that all exams actually matter, not least Year 6 SATs.

Why? Because doing poorly in any exam hurts people's self-esteem.

You can get some sample SATs papers online which might help you spot where she’s going wrong. I would absolutely try and crack this over the next few months. You are great for spotting it now. No a tutor is not OTT - do it if it feels right. If she’s great at the language and humanities side then she can afford to focus more on maths for a bit,

SATs matter as they are a reflection on where your child is at and how ready they are for secondary. Even test taking itself is a skill that has to be learned.
Plus of course progress targets are based on them.

So do tutoring or extra if you want but under 'to help you be ready for secondary' rather than the score itself.

Thanks everyone. I've contacted her teacher and asked for support, I've ordered a Schofield & Sims book so we can spend a bit of extra time at home and I've contacted a couple of tutors.

The irony is, I was terrible at maths in school and I've worked in finance my whole adult life and I'm currently sitting my ACCA qualification.

Different high schools use the SATS results differently here. Some schools teach every subject as mixed ability which is what I meant by SATS don't matter. Of course from a test scenario point of view and the confidence of doing well they matter but not all schools actually look at the results.

However her first choice school do use the results, which is why I want to make sure we tackle this now.

I think this might be part of the problem. I think she's embarrassed that she doesn't 'get' it because she's good at everything else.
I have had feedback from previous teachers that she's getting better at asking for help which suggests that she doesn't always.

It drives me mad when people say that SATs don't matter. They are an assessment of expected attainment at the end of primary school. Children will not magically improve without intervention.

Maths SATs are especially important as they are used to set for secondary. If your child does not achieve the expected standard they will be put in a lower set. If they don't improve by Y9 they will be put in a Foundation set which means that they can only gain a maximum of grade 5 at GCSE and will not cover the whole maths curriculum. Therefore, they will be unable to do any STEM subjects at A level, which is fine if that's not their thing.

However, the implications of this are not made clear to students and parents and I have many times had to explain to a young person that doing foundation maths means it is highly unlikely that they will have a career in computers or science. If they don't achieve a level 4 basic pass, their options will be severely reduced post-16 and they will have to continue studying maths.

I would advise anyone with a child struggling with maths at primary to get a tutor who will give a full assessment and fill in the gaps from the basics upwards, as all maths concepts depend on prior knowledge.

@MadKittenWoman not all schools set based on SATS results though.

I do get what you're saying but a lot of the schools here teach in mixed ability classes so the SATS results don't actually matter. They also have assessments around October time too and it's the results of these that they look to when assessing ability.

A lot of my teacher friends have also said that SATS are a reflection on the school and not the child

But I was actually asking for suggestions to help her improve her maths not intending to start a debate on SATS and if they matter or not.

It turns out that her first choice high school do set maths lessons based on the results so id like to help her to give her confidence going into these exams and then onto high school

Such misinformation here. During transition, secondary schools ask for 2 things, SATS scores and teacher assessment. Where there’s a disparity between the two, they will discuss with the class teacher during transition meetings where the child generally sits. SATS are a measure of how much time schools spend on cramming in things like test technique and how much support a child is given during the actual tests. Some schools go beyond whats acceptable in terms of ‘support’ given.
In addition, all the schools in my LA only set children from Year 8 onwards, based on how they've performed in Year 7.

@MammaGnomes even though plenty of secondary schools don't set for maths on SATs results, those SATs results are translated to GCSE grade projections - that's a government thing. Schools don't get to ignore this - they will be measured on how well the children they teach achieve the projected grades based on their SATs scores.

You're correct that that not all schools use SATs results for setting for maths. However, pretty much all comprehensives set for maths at some stage - often based on the school's own internal testing - and a lot of what @MadKittenWoman says about Foundation/Higher and limiting future options is key. So you are absolutely right to get some support in place for your DD now.

@Soontobe60 must be living in an area with small schools and lots of teachers with time on their hands, or talking about the private sector. It will be extremely rare in the British state education system for any transition meetings to occur between primary and secondary schools where individual pupils are discussed.

Did she not sit and pass the y4 TT check?

It should be quick to improve the score if its mainly TT.
So the important bit is then the reasoning paper. Most kids i know got 38-40/40 on the arithmetic paper but the imorovement was propably jan time as they hadnt practised the long division

So much misinformation here.
Sats scores have to be used by secondary schools to set progress 8 targets. This means that your child's target grades for all of their GCSE subjects are based on how they did in their sats. So absolutely, results have implications and follow them to secondary.