Year Six Sats ..

[HenleyFamily]

My daughter and I have just finished a mound of homework together and I've just realised that if she sits the Sats later this year that it is going destroy her confidence in herself.

I'm at a bit of a loss .. I've looked through the archives and was actually shocked that so many people are prepared to defend them.

Does anyone have any practical experience as to how we can withdraw her, not from the revision, but for the actual hours of the exams. Or for her to do an "unmarked" paper?

Hi - I'm a year six teacher. With regards to the SATs, all children in year six have to be registered for the tests. However, if a pupil is working below level 3 in the subject, they are not required to actually sit the test as the tests are only designed to test pupils working within levels 3 - 5.

I suggest you talk to your daughter's teacher if you think this might be the case to find out what can be done. Having said that, if your daughter is working at level 3 or above then she does have to sit the tests.

Hope this helps.

What does the school say about her progress?

You are all correct I posted here last night just after I'd realised that she couldn't do the Sats I should talk to her teacher. (there is also a second possibility that as her teacher is a member of the NUT they may not happening at all, but if this is the case it would be good to know now.)

The problem is not necessarily her academic progress, Her English is in the top 1/4 of the class and her maths is in the bottom half.

My concern is the stress that this will cause her. Worrying about them consumes her, and I'm worried that exam nerves will cause her to get a very bad mark in the exam, which will then destroy her confidence in her ability.

So the question is more to do with people who have experience of withdrawing their children from the test, is unauthorised absence the only way?

It seems odd to me that parents have the "right" not to have their children vaccinated but there does not seem to be a clear procedure for opting out of these potentially damaging tests

Definately speak to her teacher - 11 year olds really shouldn't be under that sort of stress. Having said that, children do need to get used to working in exam situations - what will she do when it comes to GCSEs?

The problem with withdrawing her is that she will sooner or later come up against exams - and, harsh as it sounds, she has to learn how to deal with them. And she will be tested when she gets to secondary school in September - particularly if the school doesn't have a SATS score to go on.

The actual test is always backed up by a teacher assessment so if a child gets a wildly different level to what is predicted then that will be reported to her next school.

I have to say the SATs thing is getting to me this year. DD2 is in year 6 and she has been given three revision books for the core subjects and is given work to look at/ complete/ memorise and then be tested on every week.

They must be spending 1 and a half hours every week on bloody tests.

She had practise tests at the beginning of December and will have another lot at the beginning of February. What a waste of time.

Then when the tests are over they will do nothing for the last 2 months, their brains will atrophy and they will take longer to get back in the swing of learning in September.

She is a very, motivated, bright child but this endless testing is destroying any love of learning she may have had. She has gone from a child who loves school to one who hates it.

Good God Bridgit, go and see your head.
How ridiculous- that shouldn't be happening,
Ds's school is very SATs orientated, but we have nothing like that.
I agree with titchy- op's dd will be tested in yr 7 anyway. Also why are you doing homework together? Not much point handing it in if you've done it!

The only way for your child not to sit the tests is for her to be below level 3 or for you to not send her to school during that week (an unauthorised term-time holiday?!).

As a Y6 teacher I can think of no single reason why the NC tests (they are, strictly speaking not SATs) are a good idea. However I bend over backwards to help the children understand that they are a necessary evil, an opportunity to show off how good they are at literacy etc. and that as long as they try hard then both they and I should, and will be proud of them.

I do think the stress-factor is down to how it is handled by the school and by the individual teacher. If the teacher can persuade a class that the tests are purely for Gordon Brown and his cronies to judge the schools for their pointless league tables then the children can be helped to see that the tests have little consequence for their educational careers - I always encourage mine to write to him and complain (writing a formal letter of complaint is a KS2 literacy objective!) about the pointlessness of tests and league tables that mean schools are judged by the marks that one particular group of 11 year olds get on one particular day in May. I tell them that how they feel about their progress and academic achievement matters more to me than any Ofsted inspector or Prime Minister and so we sit down and the children decide on a level they'd like to aim for and I promise to do my best to help them achieve that.

Come SATs week every child in my class will write a speech bubble describing how they feel about their progress in Y6, what they're most pleased with etc. and this is displayed on the classroom wall. By the time the SATs results come through it doesn't really matter because we've celebrated their actual achievements and progress.

Speak to your child's school about how much time is being given over to SATs preparation;I refused to cancel PE etc. just because of the forthcoming SATs as I hate the things and trained as a teacher because I wanted to teach and inspire, not force children through hoops! Hopefully the school should be able to recognise that your child is becoming stressed about this and that her being so will help no-one plus it runs the risk of you taking her away during SATs week (which will affect their attendance and the results, especially if it's a small school!). I do hope you get some reassurance from them....

HenleyFamily I'm afraid you can't withdraw her from SATs.

People on MN defending SATs????
Where? Please link to "many" posts defending SATs.
I don't even know anyone IRL who says that they like SATs, although journalists are always saying that "parents" like SATs.
I do know a lot of parents who are really het up that their child should do well on Yr6 SATs, though.

I just want DS not to go mad with boredom when Yr6 revises like crazy for them. There's a chance that SATs will be shifted to autumn of Yr7, I sure hope that happens.

SATs aren't the problem it's the use the Government put them to. If they weren't used to compile League Tables there wouldn't be the same pressure to teach to the test that many schools feel which in turn puts pressure on staff and children.
Assessment should be to show the teachers what children find difficult (and need more support) and what they find easy (and need stretching) it shouldn't be to compare children and schools.
Don't blame the tool for being misused.

I am so glad in Wales we do not have league tables and such rubbish.

"Where? Please link to "many" posts defending SATs."

The comments on the Sats page, Perhaps I should not have said "defending".

The slightly questionable "They will have to deal with GCSE's" attitude, seems to justify them in most peoples eyes ..

I'd speak to the teacher, but only real way to make sure she doesn't sit them is to keep her off school that week. However - she'll still have all of the build up to them in school and the homework. Plus it wouldn't surprise me if you had the EWO AND the headteacher turning up on your doorstep everyday trying to get her into school as it will affect the school's results significantly.

Parents are very quick to badmouth the SAT (not saying I agree with them) but equally as quick to look at the league tables when judging schools!

-- as a side note, I teach a yr 6 class of 20 children. Two of whom are autistic and working at a level 1 (however they are not statemented). Therefore the highest percentage we can possibly get in SATs 'pass rates' is 90% - each child counting as 5%. That's not including the lower ability children who will get a level 3 (which, despite the media's perception, this DOES NOT mean that these children leave primary school unable to read or write - it just means they're not quite a level 4). So my school is looking at getting around 70-80% level 4s. Which parents can honestly say that they would not look at my school and say oh 75% and then look at the school up the road that got 100% level 4s - (they clearly have NO children with significant SEN). Who would not judge that and think that the teaching in my school was obviously much poorer than the school up the road? In fact my children make excellent progress for them and I have also gone through a selection progress (interview/lesson observations)and now go into other schools to work with teacher to improve their teaching as my teaching has been judged to be significantly good to outstanding.

Although my grammar in that last section would be judged to be very unsatisfactory!

DD is hating Year 6 due to SATs pressure and I completely disagree with them. But I know that it is important to the school to do well and the results help them to get the specialist status they have which brings in funding and better facilities and I'm guilty of looking at league tables.

So trying to look on the bright side about it and hope that all these practice papers will mean exams aren't so daunting in the long term. Plus I spoke to head of Year 6 about the bit in letter about SATs meeting saying that commercially produced revision materials would be available as I really don't want to be going down that route. She said the way the Head had phrased it was unfortunate but they do it as some parents like to have them and ask for them, so I guess the school can't win to some extent.

Luckily my DS' school did not get too stressed about the SATs (even so I did get fed up at the amount of revision that they did).

Everyone told me the Sats results were used for streaming when the kids go to high school. However all our local high schools told us that they did their own assessments at the start of year 7. With that knowledge I told my ds that the exams were purely for the schools benefit & that his result would not impact him in anyway. We wanted him to try his best on the day, but it was nothing to get stressed about.

I think parents should put pressure on the schools to chill out about SATs but as PurpleHeffelump says parents (& OFSTED) are very quick to judge a school on its SATSs results, so schools are in a no win situation.

By PurpleHeffalump Sat 16-Jan-10 13:44:12

-- as a side note, I teach a yr 6 class of 20 children. Two of whom are autistic and working at a level 1 (however they are not statemented). Therefore the highest percentage we can possibly get in SATs 'pass rates' is 90% - each child counting as 5%. That's not including the lower ability children who will get a level 3 (which, despite the media's perception, this DOES NOT mean that these children leave primary school unable to read or write - it just means they're not quite a level 4). So my school is looking at getting around 70-80% level 4s. Which parents can honestly say that they would not look at my school and say oh 75% hmm and then look at the school up the road that got 100% level 4s - (they clearly have NO children with significant SEN). Who would not judge that and think that the teaching in my school was obviously much poorer than the school up the road?
.....................................

and if the OP failed to send her child to school the week of the SATs another 5% drop ...but parents don't understand that and only look at the numbers.

The tests aren't the problem the league tables are!

I teach yr5/6 and am in a similar position to purpleHeffalump, I have 10 year 6's so each one counts for 10%, one has a full statement and is working at Level 1/2 , two have IEP's because of the low ability they have ( although both have made excellent progress in school they will not achieve more than a level three on a good day with a fair wind behind them!). Unfortunately parents don't really look at Value Added tables, they look at raw data results and mine this year will be awful! Next year I will have 12 year 6's, only one on an IEP and three who are level 5 already. I won't suddenly turn into a miraculous teacher but my results will look completely different and so will the league tables!

Do you mean this page, Henley? I think there are only 3 comments (out of 12) that have something to say that might be interpreted as praise. It's not representative of the average Talk thread on the subject, I reckon.

Anyway, thank goodness there are some potential positives, since we're lumbered with them, for now.

Even if parents do look at the value added scores, pupils who've joined the school after the end of KS1 won't be counted.

League tables are the big problem (along with parents who use data to choose their child's primary school although why anyone in their right mind would look at KS2 results when itcomes to selecting a school for their 4-year-old I don't know).

National Curriculum tests are here to stay for the next little while, what needs to happen is that league tables are knocked on the head (along with whoever came up with the idea).

PurpleHeffalump and Primary Mum .. I'm very interested in how your head teachers justify not boycotting the SATS, is it just the Nuremburg defence or do they really believe that they are not harming the children or even giving them some positive experience?

Other posters who posted that the Sats are a problem, why are you allowing your children to take them? Surely if only a small quantity of parents boycotted the Sats previously they would have been abandoned years ago?

Regardless of this being about SATs, avoiding stressful and scary situations is not necessarily good for people either. 'Feel the fear and do it anyway' is my moto!

HenleyFamily you do seem to be assuming she will do badly in the tests, what if she does really well? Won't that boost her confidence?

We don't boycott SATS because they are a legal requirement. We may not like them, will campaign for them to be cancelled or amended but, whilst they are statutory, I won't risk losing my job by boycotting them.

HenleyFamily there are number of reasons heads may decide against boycotting the KS2 SAT tests. Firstly only two of the many teaching union have balloted members for industrial action (so it isn't certain there will be a boycott) but any individual who is not a member of those two unions and boycotts the tests will be breaking the law. Secondly it is a condition of employment that headteachers are responsible for administering KS2 SATs so in not doing so they are in breach of contract which could result in dismissal.
Finally

Headteachers of maintained schools and academies have a duty to implement the national curriculum in their schools. This includes assessment and reporting.

Headteachers must ensure their schools comply with all aspects of the key stage 2 assessment and reporting arrangements. Headteachers must:

• ensure teachers and other staff comply with the assessment and reporting arrangements
• identify which pupils should be assessed at the end of key stage 2
• decide whether any pupils should be entered for the key stage 2 tests early
• ensure teacher assessment levels for the attainment targets in the core subjects are submitted to the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA) for all pupils
• ensure the overall subject levels based on teacher assessment levels in the core subjects are calculated and recorded for all pupils
• keep all test materials secure and treat them as confidential
• ensure the test opening and administrative procedures are followed
• be able to give an accurate account of all those who have had access to the test materials before, during and after the test period
• carry out all tests according to the published timetable unless QCDA has approved a timetable variation
• follow the arrangements for external marking of tests
• provide parents, carers or guardians with written reports on, and the opportunity to discuss, their child?s progress free of charge at least once in each school year
• ensure the statutory requirements for the transfer of records between schools are fulfilled, including the completion of the common transfer file
• cooperate with any monitoring requests, including visits to the school, by local authority representatives and QCDA and its representatives
• ensure all eligible and able pupils take the tests.