When does hot housing for Sats usually start in state primary (year 6)

[hothousingforsats]

Anyone know when hot housing for Sats starts in state primary schools?

I don't agree with them and think it is such a shame part of year 6 is wasted cramming for these. His school got their best ever Sats scores last year and it seems to have set them on a path of wanting to maintain their top position amongst local schools at any cost.

I've decided to remove my DS from school for these (this would be next year) and I will home educate once the hot housing starts until he starts secondary school. He's likely to get his first choice secondary school, but even his second and third choices do their own banding tests so Sats are irrelevant.

I would hope he would be learning new stuff for the Autumn term and they don't start this early. Do they? Would they start in the Spring term or is it not until after Easter?

I thought I'd use the time between now and then to plan some really cool educational trips away (ones we can't afford during the school holidays). Booking in advance will be far cheaper, so I'd be grateful to anyone who can tell me roughly when they stop learning and start cramming!

If you object to assessments in Yr 6 how do you feel about the ongoing constant assessments he's going to sit in secondary school? The sats may not benefit him personally now but they do contribute to national monitoring of educational standards and help parents make decisions about where to apply for. Information you have personally benefited from previously

If I asked my 11yo son whether he'd rather be in school or go on a long holiday I'm pretty sure I know what he'd say too...

Id just pick whatever time frame suits your travel plans and remove him from school then. Don't make it a moral crusade against SATs when it's not really about them at all

He will already have done work for SATs, the work doesn't just start in Y6

Clearly his school does do them, otherwise they wouldn't have any results to shout about.

@hothousingforsats is the school that shite they need to 'hot house' to get good results?

bloody hell you don't think much of them!

The hot housing is not acceptable. I get where you are coming from.

But what to do about it? Taking him out of school and home-schooling is one option but he might lose the thread of friendships and these will be important to him when he goes up to secondary school. And there are often some post-SATs jollies that he will miss out on, as well as being part of school teams etc.

I am very pro- home ed, so am not coming from a critical standpoint, but I think it is worth considering in this circumstance what he might miss out on as he is already in an established friendship group and routine.

He is old enough to have this discussion with him over several days, giving him time to think it through. You need to put the pois and cons as you see it and listen to his thoughts.

I must say that my GC took the SATs in their stride because their parents said they did not matter one jot; and going over stuff and making sure they were secure in it did them no harm. What really annoys me is when they get to secondary and go over all the same stuff again - makes you wonder why we force feed them stuff from such a young age (4/5) when they could be having more fun!

What does your son want to do? Will his friends all be going to the same secondary? Does he enjoy school?

All schools will approach it differently, so worth speaking to the parents of kids in the year 7 cohort to see how it felt for them. Year six is sats focused for some of the time but overall a really fun year at my kids school.

Never hothoused as they all went to local state schools. However doing well was useful years later.

When Covid hit and one of my DC didn’t get to sit GCSEs the school based their grade on many factors including what set they were in and what they got in their sats. There was quite a lot of overlap between sets but the sets were decided in year 7 partly down to sats. Schools use it as a benchmark against expected progress. So yes they can be doubly important even years later. All the first set got 9s and 8s. This helped my DC who was at the bottom of set one but had a good teacher at sats at primary (and is clever but doesn’t work) and got level 6. If they had been in set 2 which was similar level, they may have come out with a lower grade just because the school had to estimate. DC missed a mock just before covid which v much worked out in their favour as they were coasting at the time and that sat result became more important!

This is how I feel.

Absolutely couldn't care less about SATs but I do think they get a lot from the group experience and the real sense of reward and release afterwards. Our school do a breakfast club with fresh fruit and croissants, then a waterfight and bbq afterwards and they look forward to them all through KS2.

I have older ones who missed SATs and year 6 in general due to covid and it impacted then the whole way through.

If that's your aim then why are you concerning yourself about when to remove him? If you just want to take him on trips then pull him out now although going on trips only wouldn't be considered acceptable to the EHE team.

The exams serve a purpose. They encourage children to consolidate all of the learning from throughout primary school.

Good teachers know that you need to revisit learning in order to sustain knowledge. Preparation for SATs helps to focus this revisiting.

I have never worked in a school that waits until Year 6 to start thinking about SATs...

PS. I'm not saying that the experiences you mention are worse than being in Year 6. I just disagree with your assertion that revising learning is useless.

Year 7 is a far better year to miss than Year 6, if we're talking academics.

Year 6 teachers are often the best in the school. Year 7-8 are hugely overlooked in the majority of secondary schools because teachers put far more work into GCSE and A-Level classes (the Key Stage 3 slump is a well known issue).

My DC didn't need their SATS either as their Secondary (Private) did their own assessments but they did them anyway as they needed to be part of the school community and understand that somtimes you hd to do things that arent fun
Also, my DC still talk about the last few weeks of Primary nd how much fun they had

I would think carefully about what is best for him.
year 6 isn’t just about sats.

Funny how differently people see things! Ours were year 6 2020 and missed all the year 6 events due to Covid. We all found that really sad. And here is op voluntarily missing it!

I can’t remember being stressed about SATS. Is it not a measure of the school and not the individual children?

Year 6 is an amazing year. Your son will be missing out on so much.

You’re got 6 whole weeks to travel with him. I’m really not getting ops reasoning here.

Depends on the school - somewhere between summer year 5 and spring year 6 based on what I hear.

@JuliettaCaeser she’s got more than that as child is in Y5 so has 2 lots of summer holidays before her son starts Secondary

That’s how sensible schools see it… a friend’s daughter has been in tears pretty much weekly since the start if year 6 due to exam pressure (school is very proud of their sats results)

OP - it’s not unreasonable to do a bit of traveling in the end of Y6. Especially if you feel like he is growing up and off to secondary, etc.

You don’t need to vilify his school (or the school system) more broadly. You are not in education, you have no idea if your son can actually benefit from consolidating his Y6 material. Or if the experience of preparing for and sitting exams may actually be helpful down the line.

If he does not have any experience - GCSEs will be his 1st exams. And they are quite stressful to someone who has NO exam experience. But for you - it probably seems too far away to matter.

Personally - i’d just plan the trips you want to plan for the last few weeks of term and pull him out of school then. No need to create some big justification.

also - prepping for SATs is not ‘hothousing’.

DDs school start in October by the looks of it. They have:

• extra school in the holidays (October & Easter)
• after school boosters for all pupils twice a week
• can go in early 4 times a week

DD won't be doing any of this unless she wants to. I think it's ridiculous!

I think it is a terrible idea to pull your ds just to avoid the SATs. Are there other issues? Is he not happy at the school? If it is just the SATs, I would think about this more. He would be missing out a lot of other things and experiences. Year 6 is a special year and even though my dc were not needing the SATs prep (the work was too easy) so we never did any of the homework for it....they still really enjoyed the school year and would never want to be pulled out. Also, if you pull your dc out it might throw him off for secondary....meaning he will need to play catch up getting his head back in the right mindset for school.

Won’t it be really really expensive to pull a kid out of school for 8/10 weeks?

Easter holidays before the SATs DD came home with a thick pack of worksheets and revision stuff and the promise of 5 minutes extra break for every sheet done. She is a high performer and very academically able so we had no concerns about her ability to do well in the SATs, we also really didn’t care how well she did in them because they have no bearing on her life. So me and DH did them one night and let DD just relax over the holiday.

While there were bits of the SATs prep and process that caused DD some anxiety overall I think having the experience of doing them was a positive one, she saw her friends and herself and the teachers getting stressed and hyper-focused and developed some perspective herself on the process, she started to learn how to revise which is a skill she will need for GCSEs, she got experience taking exams. She also had lots of of fun experiences, they did special breakfasts and celebration events, her friend group did study sessions oven group calls which inevitably ended up being all fun chat and messing about, they supported each other, recognised when one was feeling pressure and buoyed each other up.