According to Mr Balls the majority of parents appreciate KS2 SATS.

[OrmIrian]

Not on MN they don't seem to.

Not in RL IME.

So where are they then?

Yes you are right. Tis the league tables that are the problem then and the way that SATs are used with regard to them. Without them SATs will tend to lose some of their force so will become a great deal more the kind of test that parents could value. However I see SATs very much as a tool of the league tables.

I am by no means a parent of high-acheiving DC - moderately acheiving, in a school just out of special measures in the case of the primary school. I simply resented the fact that an entire term of my DS's schooling was spent on fruitless mocks and practice papers. And he was miserable. And his secondary school is now judged as outstanding - but not because of results, in fact they were one of the schools potentially facing closure because of low GCSE results, but because of the standard of teaching and the general ethos and the excellent VA score. So in that sort of school any kind of external testing might well give completely the wrong sort of picture.

My school like hundreds of others uses the "optional" SAT tests with pupils in Y3-5. The children are given the tests over the period of a week...no prep, no revision, no stress. The tests show teachers, parents and children what they need to know. The results go into the school's tracking system and are passed onto the next teacher. So why should Y6 be different?

faraday, some of what you say does make sense, but I your last statement is a MAJOR assumption. In fact as a teacher and a parent of a low attainin child, the SATS are terrible for self confidence. This is because so much pressure IS put on the kiids and they compare results and it rubs in their failure and makes them feel stupid.

However with school set exams they take account of the lower sets and the exams are usually different. The teacher can see what they need to know without kids comparing themself with everyone else.

You cannot overestimate how much knocking their confidence when they are so young - affects them.

So perhaps we needs SATS but a reformed system where a different style of exam is set for different abilities? We used to have that back in the O level/CSE days, after all! Trouble is, the CSE was seen as a watered down O level thus got amalgamated into the G(C)SE, didn't it?