Hooray-Sats over!!

[deaddei]

Back to normality and actually learning something now.
Ds off with mates to play football in the park and then home for chicken and chips.

Woo hoo!

Mine never stopped playing 'football in the park' during SATS!

Though the highlight as far as DS1 was concerned was the fact they had a kids choice film afternoon yesterday after the second and final Maths paper, where they were allowed to take in (whisper) crisps and coke! DS1 was far more concerned about how he was going to keep his coke cold all day!

This is a school that takes its SATS seriously, mind (they feel the need to, having come 6th in the county last year... curse league tables!) but I can't say DS1 ever felt too pressured. I did, but that's what parents do, isn't it?!

And to be fair, my DS never stopped 'learning' during the course of his Y6. OK, much of the learning was directed towards what would come up in SATS papers, but surely ALL learning is targeted in some way? We don't howl when our DCs GCSE curriculum is tailored to passing that GCSE, do we?

DS continued to have theatre trips, to study periods of history, countries in geography, comparative religion in RE, lay on assemblies and musical concerts. He did touch rugby, pond dipped, did street dance... but none of that comes up in the SATS, does it? I wonder if it's just us parents who beleve that every moment of the school day is SATS, SATS, SATS cos that's all we see in their book bag!

My DD has had a great y6 - SATs were a tiny part of it. And in fact they postively enjoyed sats week - as they got lots of treats; the tests don't last that long anyway. Why do other schools seems to make such a big deal of it? Possibly because the teachers/school is judged by them. A couple of years ago my DS had a teacher who told them they all had to do well in sats or her job might be in danger. What sort of teacher says that to a class of children? Luckily he knew from us it wasn't a big deal. But I have seen in other threads some parents have got coaching for their kids - that is ludicrous. No wonder childlen are stressed. Adults need to stop making these tests such a big thing - and they won't be.