KS1 Sats - really difficult or is that just me?

[houseofboys]

I went and bought some SATS writing/spelling papers today to get an idea of what DS1 aged six is going to be doing. He's stuggling with writing so I wondered how he compared - I DON"T intend to get him to practice them. But I couldn't believe the suggested standard. How many 6 or just 7 year olds and writing full letters in neat cursive writing with correct grammar and punctuation?? Either I'm horribly out of date or children are much brighter these days! I'm really worried now about how he's going to do and feel like taking him out of school that week to spare both of us the stress!

Taking him out of school won't help - a teacher assessment is the only result reported to you at the end of the year. The assessment will be drawn from many sources of evidence to do with his day to day work in the classroom over the year. A very small part of the evidence will be the mark of the tests - some LEAs don't even allow this as evidence when they moderate the assessments.

The tests measure children's attainments from levels 2 to 3. If your child is working below this level, he will not complete the tests, but you would probably know about it by now from parent consultations. It's better to ask the school how you can support your child in Y2 than to make him do commercial tests. [[http://nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/node/88598 This] leaflet is very helpful in suggesting the kinds of activities you can do to support your ds at home.

Sorry, messed up link - it's here

I think those books are quite hard. I have a math one for dd (7 in March, year 2). She struggles with some of the math word problems which involve knowing bonds to 100. But, if I quz her against her peers, she knows at least as much as they do. Her homework last week said to practise bonds to 10. She knows them all very well. The extention work saiud bonds to 20. So I told her we were going to practise them over the weekend. But, she knew them all the first time I asked. SO I decided we didn't need to study anything. My point is what the school excpects os well below the key stage 1 book we have.

I think that some of the worked examples you see are way beyond most 6-7 year olds. There is another thread on here with people bragging about how their DCs got 'level 4' in KS1 Sats etc. Impossible as far as I know - certainly when my elder DD took them we were told the average was a 2 and the highest mark a 3. For the record, she certainly didn't get all 3s. I can't even remember the exact marks. She's just passed the 11 plus and been called back to sit a scholarship exam for one private school. And no, that's not meant to be a revolting boast but a message not to take KS1 Sats particularly seriously. I suspect that the children who do best in them will, for the most part, be those born near the beginning of the academic year as maturity will be a major factor.

Thanks, i feel much better. We're starting to follow handwriting without tears programme at home for 10 mins a day, because I think most of his issues are to do with physically not being able to express himself very well on paper. I shan't do Sats preparation. His teacher insists she doesn't but then he tells me they have started to do 'quizzes' at school - reading passages and answering qus on them - so sounds suspicously like it to me!

Oh I'm sure they do some prep at school! And if you want to be terribly cynical then you could take note of something an ex-primary teacher said to me about them never being likely to give them all top grades at KS1, even in a class of little geniuses, in any school that carries on up to 11. Why? Because they would always want to demonstrate some improvement, from average to good etc, under their wonderful teaching...

Main thing is not to worry about it too much. They are 6-7 after all.

Belissima, I assume that dig was meant for me? If so, I suggest you re-read the thread you're referring to. It was in no way boastful, and if you had read it carefully, you would have seen that I quite clearly stated that DS1 was assessed as getting lvl 3 in his SATS tests, and lvl 4 in his teacher assessments. But the thread was in no way 'boastful', it was actually a thread about my DS2 and my concerns re the SATS for him with his SN. I'm sorry if you feel I was being boastful, that was not my intention, I was just trying to get some advice wrt my OTHER son. AND DS1 Is not an older child for his year, his birthday is in the Easter holidays. However, DS2 that I am worried about, is one of the oldest children in the year...

Sorry Loudlass as you sound so upset - but yes your post does come across as a little bit conceited, though others must be the judge, and I do think threads like that only serve to create anxiety amongst a lot of mothers - look at this thread and many like it. I might well have been the same when elder DC was in Yr 2. We are talking about 6-7 year olds fgs.

Sorry but I do find some of the 'my child is so unstretched at school/bored as he/she is being kept back/could already do all these spellings when he/she was three etc' threads that you sometimes see on here frankly, well, unfeeling towards the concerns of others. No wonder people get so worried about which 'colour book' their DC is on. Often it's only when your elder DC is a lot older that you realise how little in matters in the younger years, but that's not how you feel at the time.

End of my rant and hijack, sorry OP.

Looking at the OP, there is actually no need to mention how well your own child is doing unless they are at a similar level to the OP's ds. So any mention of great achievements on a thread like this is just pointless apart from being an ego massage.

houseofboys, my dd is facing SATS this year too and I have found a huge discrepancy between the sort of homework she brings back and the sort of things they are required to do in a SATS paper. For dd it's not so much the literacy but the numeracy which is way beyond her. In fact, I did get her to run through one of the numeracy papers with me in a fun kind of way and I think she got maybe 25% of it right, maybe less as I helped her a lot as we went through it.

So I wouldn't worry too much and as others have said, it will give you and your ds' teacher something to work towards in understanding his strengths and weaknesses.

I do think it's too much to be doing this kind of test at this age though.

I have never said that I think that SATS for 6/7yo's are a good idea, and I can hardly be called up as it being an 'ego massage' when my DD (who is older than DS1) didn't do her Y2 SATS as she was working WELL below lvl 1 in Y2, in fact she didn't hit NC Lvl 1 until this year, now she is in Y7...and I'm seriously concerned about the fact that DS2 is going to be completely unable to produce any wrtitten work for it due to his SN, despite being 'average' in oral answers for his peer group...so I think 'ego massage' is a bit off base, considering I have 3 DC's, one at the very lowest end of the ability range, one who is slap bang in the middle of the ability range, and one who is at the top end of the ability range.

I strongly disagree with SATS for primary school children full stop, as in Y2, the difference in levels between the children in the class can range from p-scales at one end of the classes ability range to Lvl 3 in the SATS at the other. And Y6 SATS, really, just waste a year of their schooling where they are 'taught to the test', instead of getting a fully rounded curriculum.

My answer to the actual OP is that I would concentrate more on the teacher assessments, the class teacher is the person who has taught your DC for 5 hours a day, 5 days a week for by that point, the best part of a year.

And Bellisima - Why should I not be allowed to ask questions about whether or not the school is stretching my DS1 enough, just as much as I'm allowed to ask questions about whether the school is doing enough to help my SN DD or DS2? Am I not allowed to be just as proud of my DS1's academic abilities as I am of the fact that DD has learnt to tie her shoelaces at 11.10yo? I take pride in ALL my children's acheivements, every child has different strenghts and weaknesses, every child is different.

*WRITTEN

Of course you are allowed to be proud of your DS1's achievements - but why not ask the school rather than proclaiming on here that he is working at home at level 5 with you. On top of a normal school day? I feel sorry for the poor chap. I agree with violetbloom about going on about levels on here.

And I too have children with disabilities. My elder child is in the care of Moorfields. Oh and she isn't even a summer baby so doesn't even have that excuse for poor KS1 sats - obviously rubbish as well as half f*ing blind, eh? But I didn't spend her Year 3 working at home with the poor child - they are 7!

Apologies again to the OP for hijacking. Please be relaxed about KS1 Sats.

The only difference between the teacher assessment at the end of year 2, and the teacher assessment in say, Y1, or Y3, is that the Y2 one legally has to be reported to parents, LEA, governors, etc, and a test must be used to support the many, many sources of evidence required to back up the assessment.

But essentially, the same things happen from Y1 up to Y5 - children are constantly teacher assessed (not tested, that's different). It's no longer a big deal in Y2.