Can you refuse SATS

[Zizi444]

Can you refuse to allow your child to sit SATS? What would happen if they were off on that day?

In my opinion they are a pointless waste of time are purley for the schools benefit. They serve no purpose for the kids other than to stress them out. My eldest never did them due to covid and I'd prefer my youngest not to do them but I'm not sure if this is an option.
Thanks

I almost wish I had for my DD as every school report now has it on the bottom with her prediction for GCSE. Not based on her current performance. I appreciate them informing us of this once but no need to do this repeatedly.

Talk about the potential for self fulling prophesy.

bulldozer parenting- clearing all obstacles out of a child’s way, at the cost of their resilience, problem solving skills, ability to cope etc. it’s not nice seeing your child stressed but to an extent isn’t that a part of life… it’s not meant to be easy.
tldr I wouldn’t do it

Y6 is notoriously a ballache year. Dull and tedious in the extreme, but it’s literally only a few weeks to the SATs and to yank them out after doing all the hard, boring work just at the point where they have SATs week (which is often made a lot of fun - couple of tests a day and huge playtimes) then all the fun summer term stuff, trips, sports day, end of year play, leavers parties etc isn’t exactly a nice thing to do to your own kid. There is definitely an argument against testing but that sitting with your own classmates in your own school hall with your own teachers is too anxiety inducing isn’t one of them and nor is “they are for the schools benefit” - tell that to the y10 kid who misses out on gcse intervention because he won’t impact the schools target 8. Tell that to the group of 11 year olds released from the hall onto the field to play with a real and genuine sense of achievement and solidarity. Skipping y6 and going travelling sounds great. Doing the boring bit of y6 and missing the fun bit to sit around at home while all your friends are in school is not so great. But ultimately nobody cares if your kid does them or not (apart from the kid that is).

My current year 10 class didn’t do SATs and for most of them it isn’t a problem. However, there’s a couple of kids that are your average middle of the road students that I really think would have benefited from doing them. They are the kids that struggle a little bit with self confidence and always underestimate what they are capable of. I really think that they’d have done better on the SATs than they thought they would have and it would have given them a little confidence boost. These aren’t kids that would have been anxious or stressed about them, so a little different.

I think it’s an important learning experience and better to introduce in the comfort of primary than later. My dcs’ experience was nervous before but once the week started school ran breakfast for all year 6 and it was an amazing bonding experience. Most of the dc do better than expected.

Anxiety is an emotion all dc will experience and imo you’re not doing your dc any favours “protecting” them from it. You’re missing a vital stage in development learning how to deal with the nerves/butterflies and over come them.

IME it’s the anxious parents who pull dc from sats and basically push their own anxieties onto their dc rather than support them to manage their feelings.

there are some levels of SEN where sitting sats would not be appropriate but that would be a conversation with a teacher and the dc would have an EHCP in place.

Thanks, I’ve never heard the term ‘bulldozer parenting’ before.
Made me realise I’m guilty of this sometimes. Children do need to learn to navigate obstacles, as we all do!

We had SATs right after 11+. No parent gave a shiny shite about them as they had all been tutoring away for 11+ which is what really mattered to the future of those poor kids.

Not all schools make it a fun process but have months and months of endless practice tests, mandatory homework practicing papers, breakfast and holiday sessions. Way too much pressure for something unnecessary when senior schools do their tests.

Many secondaries do.

My DT’s didn’t do SATS or 11+ as they were at a UK based international school with their language abilities being the only selection criteria for entrance. They still managed to get all A’s at GCSE and A levels.

@Parker231 but that’s the point. The child does all the hard slog and stress bit (and I don’t agree that schools should pile in the pressure) and then parents pull the child out of SATs week, which is when schools put on treats, games etc in between the tests. So if you are going to pull the child out, better to pull them out of the whole of Y6. Why let them do all the hard work and then not let them sit the tests with their mates.

I’ve never understood parents who pull children out of school for SATs week. They let their children do all the hard work, prep beforehand, why do that?

It would be like if at work your boss asked you to prepare for a presentation, you spend months on it, putting a huge amount of hours in and then on the morning you are meant to do it your boss says ‘your bit isn’t needed now’. How pissed off would you be, especially if the rest of your team are still involved. And they had a celebration afterwards which you wouldn’t be invited to.

You’ve misunderstood my post. I don’t think they are necessary for all students. There’s just a few kids this year that really lack confidence in what they are capable of. I think they would have got higher SATs scores than they would have thought they were capable of. It would have been a confidence boost for those few kids.

Which is why I said Y6 pre SATs ie September - May is a ballache, tedious, boring and a hard slog. The OPs kid has already done this bit. SATs week itself is often a nice week. Lots of schools do have extended playtimes for Y6 during SATs week and are generally really nice to them. You can’t have months of endless tests and months of homework in SATs week because SATs week is only a week. I never said all schools make the months leading up to SATs fun because A - they blatantly don’t and B - it’s entirely irrelevant as it’s in the past and the OP didn’t withdraw from the shitty bits of Y6. As an aside I don’t know how we have reached the point where some boring homework aged 10/11 is “pressure”, or how a test in May of Y6 is unnecessary but one in June/July of Y6 (which is when my dc secondary do CATs) or September of Y7 is absolutely fine.

Yes and it sends the message that tests are so terrifying your mum will remove you from school over it. The dd might have found it ok and felt a sense of satisfaction and enjoyed the fun stuff afterwards but is instead being deregistered from school over it. Only to have tests in September anyway. Mine had a test on their induction day in July too.

Utter nonsense!
Teachers are not ‘measured’ against SATs results and if a Head teacher tried to do this the Unions would be in like a shot.
Children are disapplied from sitting the tests if they are working well below the level of the tests - as should be the case. The results schools are ‘measured’ against are linked to progress, not absolute SAT results in isolation. My school is consistently sitting at the lower end of the results tables because of the nature of our children - most are INA / refugee children. Interestingly, their parents are absolutely all for their children taking exams / tests / SATs because they understand the value of test scores when linked to education.

It's really not. We've noticed no extra pressure at all. They are just expected to revise for tests, the same as everyone else.

I used to be quite impressed with schools with good sats results. I’m now much more cynical. I think a lot of maths results are propped up by kids doing the 11 plus at a higher level. I have also seen our school make year 6 really narrow re the sats and they’ve been doing extra breakfast sessions for cramming since January. I’m not sure that drilling kids on niche grammatical terms that they’ll never use again is the best way to prepare kids for secondary. It seems like skills around essay writing, critical thinking, broader subject expertise are dropped in favour of drilling the sats topics.

As it happens, I’m moving my eldest to a prep and one of the bonuses in my eyes is year 6. I’m not bothered by the actual week of sats- it looks quite fun for the kids. It’s more the approach around the whole year for y6.

If necessary.

Though I'm hoping school will agree to withdraw him because he hasn't got any hope in getting more than a few correct, if that and it just isn't fair to put him in that position.

Totally agree.

It’s ok saying well they get a nice breakfast and a movie at the end of the week but many people don’t realise the sheer amount of drill these kids are put through in the months (& even years) in the run-up to these tests. And just how pointless, abstract and niche half of the content is.

Yes it may well ‘prepare’ them for sitting more exams but it certainly doesn’t prepare them for life. And it’s just sad that 10&11 year olds have to go through this.

I wish we could follow the lead of many other European education systems which are not so test-heavy and don’t expect kids to memorise lots of pointless shit. Places such as Finland and Switzerland which have only one end of secondary exam and have shorter days (Finland is 9-2pm) and don’t start school until age 7 😭

More importantly these kids score FAR higher in life satisfaction studies and happiness than kids in the uk. We finished at the bottom of the European league tables last year. I find that so very very sad.

So your response to concern over a test due to missing school is to, miss more school?

If the alternative is him sitting there with a test that simply isn't suitable for him? Yes.

Like I said, I'm hoping that school will withdraw him.

'In my opinion they are a pointless waste of time'

Seems like its your opinion more than the childs.

They don't sit there for long, it's about 5 mins max! He may as well do as well as he can and get on with he rest of his learning. Why would any parent make their child miss 2 weeks of school over a 5 minute test. Ridiculous.

It won't take him 5 minutes. If school agree to withdraw him, he won't need to miss 2 weeks of school.