SNSA tests - what's the current thinking?

[OnTheEdgeOfTheNight]

I know there was some controversy when the nationalised tests were launched. I'm interested in people's opinions as a parent or teacher--do you think they are useful? If parents ask to see the results, what sort of information is provided? Thanks.

They really aren't useful at all.

The P1 tests are very hard. None of the children got upset when I tested them but were very obviously bored. It was more importantly a huge waste of man power. We have no wifi so can't use ipads- stuck with one child, one computer and one adult. It took nearly two months to do two classes.

The majority of results confirmed only what we knew already through more useful assessments. The few outliers were those who either got bored or who managed to guess their way through.

None of our parents have asked to see results. They seem to come in colour coded grids.

I'm not as familiar with the P4 and P7 tests.

I am at the other end (S3 testing) and my pupils found them a bit of a nothingness. We deliberately avoid all references to tests and assessments and keep it low key. Which it should be as it is an data gathering exercise . As a parent my DDs only younger 2 involved and only for S3 as it hadn't been invented before then they scarcely noticed and thought it was a bit of a skive in the IT rooms. My department use it to look at trends and areas of strengths and weaknesses for our planning. That's about as much as you can as , on it's own, SNSA is not evidence of achievement of a level. It can be used to contribute to a body of evidence though. Waste of time if I am honest. Well the S3 one is - we already have robust evidence to use to decide progression into the senior phase .

Thanks for your comments. I have a child in P4, we missed the P1 tests (they were introduced the following year) so it's all new to me. I tried looking online but all I could find was the official line (which was vague) and the political arguments when they were introduced - people talking about boycotting them and the P1 tests being at the wrong level as @ActiveDutyOlga said.
My personal feeling is that it's probably not useful and I'd rather have an extra 5 minutes with his teacher to discuss his ability, rather than however much time his teacher will spend on this. Thanks again.

As a parent I found the old 5-14 levels more useful but I'm not a teacher so maybe they were a pain too.

I found them more useful than the reports that followed which would tell you what things they'd covered without giving any idea as to whether they were ahead, doing as expected or struggling. As 5-14 was gone and hadn't been replaced with any testing, we went through many years with no real clarity.

My DSs, like posters above, were only involved at the latter end of testing.

5 -14 for secondary teachers was a pain. We would have pupils coming up who had "passed level D" when the reality was they had been coached into how to pass the assessment for the level. Ask them to apply those skills in a different context and face often resulted. I can only imagine that there was significant pressure to get X amount through whatever level by whatever stage.
My own DDs hated them as they always knew who was the high fliers and who wasn't. DD1 was a quiet girl and desperate to try Level D Maths work towards the end of P6 - no no would damage her self esteem. S1 teacher jumped her 2 levels in 2 months.

A more transparent system would help parents as being 3rd level CFE in S1 tells you nowt as most are. So your DC could be just starting to be measured against 3rd level benchmarks or almost ready for fourth.

Not a great fan of either .And not looking forward to the IT nightmare of SNSA which will give me at best a pretty graph, thankfully S3 Parent's Night is passed so hopefully I have been able to let them know how their DC are performing.

I have kids at various levels in school and they've all been doing the tests. My P7 was stressed about it as it was all online and the school had no end of IT issues so he had to start about three times and it kept crashing. His teacher was very low key about it all though and just kept telling the kids it didn't matter and to try their best.

At senior school, I don't think my S3 was ever even given the results. I don't think I saw them either. I'd put far much store in what her teachers say about her and how she's progressing in school tests.

5-14 was a stronger curriculum (imo) but the assessments were problematic.

Having said that, it was also a completely different world... no diagnoses, far more children placed in special schools, very few EAL children... all of these things are affecting mainstream education.

I suspected that was the case @Lidlfix.

I didn't think about it from the pupils side either as mine were always at the upper end and passed assessments earlier than expected - not that they cared a jot! It's a shame that some DC are affected because they care and want to do well :(

Even when you call the groups by colours or shapes or whatever, the kids still know who the top and bottom groups are, maybe just not necessarily how far ahead or behind they might be I guess.

I think when teachers are decent and know your child, you should be able to get a good idea of where they are without scores and testing. It would also help if you were able to get some info out of your child also. Unfortunately when neither of those are happening and they aren't scored against levels, you have no idea how your child is actually doing in some subjects until they fail or pass Nat 5s.

Agree with Lidl that both SNSA and 5-14 assessments take a lot more manpower and time than they're really worth... at least with SNSA there's no way of "teaching to the test" which was what made 5-14 assessments completely worthless.

The teachers in my school quite like seeing that SNSA results match closely with the rest of their professional judgements (by and large this is the case for P4 and P7) but the P1 assessments generally don't tell us anything useful - at best they're an opportunity to fulfil some of the Technologies outcomes.

I thought the purpose of the P1 tests was to benchmark where DC started at so as to show the improvements that they have made over time?

I think there must be some way of providing enough info to parents and DC whilst also not overburdening teachers and distracting from actual teaching but i'm not sure what that is - maybe improving actual reports and/or having a framework for parents meetings? I don't know .

In theory the reports telling you how much effort DC have made should be a good thing but in reality they often become about who the teachers like, whether the DC is good at the subject and whether they are behaving well. Even the DC know this and admit that they have often got a top score but weren't really trying, they just happened to be good at the subject and not cause any issues in class.

In theory that's what the P1 SNSA should do, Wax. But in reality a computer based test is so far removed from how P1 children learn, so they're being tested on all sorts of other variables at the same time (how comfortable they are using tablet/PC/mouse, their ability to understand the question in the way it's set out etc).

Leaving aside the P1 tests, in my view as a parent, these tests are necessary. They are the ONLY indipendent benchmark you have. All the rest is subjective and depends on what the teacher feels like.
Given the way the CfE is (not) structured I prefer to have some kind of hard evidence as to how my kids are doing.
Also, they are kept very hush hush. I believe nobody asks to see them because probably nobody knows they exist. To have a look at my kid's results I had to jump through a few hoops and AFAIK, I was the only one in the whole school who could be bothered to do it. However, it doesn't follow that they are not useful, especially considering that a lot of evidence points towards a slipping of standards and that Scotland has pulled out of all the international testing (except PISA), so there is no other way to keep track of what is going on.

Arkadia, your child's school should be able to outline several ways in which they track progress, it's not just teacher judgement (although that's always been important too).

SNSA should merely verify what teachers already know and on that basis it's fine for p4 upwards, but I wouldn't ever want to use the results as a definitive and only indicator of progress.

@Superjaggy, perhaps not if they do well, but if they do badly, it would raise some questions.
Besides, the way I look at it, as Primary School is pretty much a glorified kindergarten, you do need some external evidence of progress, limited thought it might be.

Ah @Arkadia, I assume you're on the wind up... not biting, but SNSA is administered internally

Why would I be on winding you up?
Anyway, yes, the tests are administered internally in conditions that are suboptimal to say the least (it is difficult to compare the results across schools), but at least the questions are set externally and the marking is done externally too.
Not ideal, but any means, but at the moment better than nothing.

Glorified kindergarten?! Each subject of the curriculum has clear benchmarks regarding what pupils should achieve at P1-7.

Why would you want to compare across schools? Virtual Comparator is the only measurement worth using. It's also a computer program that marks rather than an external (human) marker demonstrating how synthetic and lacking value the assessment is.

In an ideal world, all teachers would be dedicated, hardworking, articulate, not overworked and able to provide comprehensive feedback to parents and DC on how they are doing relative to where they should ideally be and whether they are working to their potential/what they need to work on.

Unfortunately that's not the system we have and whilst most teachers fit most of the criteria above (apart from not being overworked and having the time for comprehensive feedback), some don't and the system also doesn't really work well ime.

I preferred the old style reports where a teacher would write freeform about how your child was doing rather than a bunch of paragraphs selected from a computer database that told me what they'd been covering.

Teachers are human the same as the rest of us and some do a brilliant job, some do a decent job, some do an adequate job and some just shouldn't be in teaching. I've come across all types. My DC had one teacher in primary that just basically coasted through the year and didn't seem to progress any children, this was in the 5-14 times and none of the children I'm aware off in her class ever seemed to move up any levels, the excuse being that although they'd progressed (they hadn't) they still weren't quite ready for the next level yet. Funnily was also the only teacher in primary not to say that Dss had been a joy to teach. Told one DS that he was wrong about when his birthday was so he didn't get a pencil from the headmistress - he still complains about that! :o Other teachers have energised and enthused and encouraged and I'm really thankful for them. Interestingly, the primary teacher that most of the DC in school were scared of and was supposed to be very strict was one of the best and most loved of all their primary teachers. She was so passionate and enthusiastic and my DC ended up not scared very quickly as to be fair I think she was less strict than me!

Anyway, the point i suppose is that we shouldn't need testing to demonstrate how DC are doing but I can totally see why parents want it and also why it's not necessarily a good thing. Splinters in my arse now from sitting on the fence.

@MumofHunter,
They have benchmarks at kindergarten too, so nothing new there. I don't understand why you get upset. The spirit of the CoE is that (primary) school IS a kindergarten. My primary is the only one I know of that has been rated excellent, so what I see must be indicative.
A question I have been asking myself is, what would happen if my kids were unable to go to school for, say, six months? Would their education be affected? In all honesty, I don't think so as they would be "experiencing" other things outside school. What is the added value that the school offers? Difficult to answer and to me that's why in some quarters they object to the standardised testing, they fear they could be found out. The put the same emphasis on ukulele playing or on Gaelic 101 that they put on fraction or spelling, i.e. very little indeed. The mantra is "we have to cover as many things as humanly possible", never mind if they are all micron deep.

@Arkadia I'm a primary teacher. I assume you're on the wind up.

@MumofHunter, I can assure you most decisively that I am NOT. I am just telling you what I am seeing.
To give you a stupid example from this afternoon, my eldest (P6) doesn't know why "I've went" is incorrect. You try to explain it to her and you find out that she doesn't really understand what a verb is (leaving aside "it is a 'do' word") and she can't really recognise it in a sentence. It follows that she doesn't know what the word "went" or "gone" actually mean or when you use one or the other, rather than by giving you examples (as in "I've went").
Talking about fractions, this week they have been doing "simplification" of fractions still using cut outs and pies. I expect that next week they will move on to another topic and they will talk about fractions again in a few month's time (I have seen the pattern, so I know what to expect)
If you like we can talk spelling... that is interesting too...
Oh, just to avoid confusion, my daughter is in the super advanced top set in all subjects (at least wherever there is one), so she is not getting easier work, but the most difficult around.

The sorry state of IT provision & maintenance in schools is definitely a problem in general and with the tests.

I got the results of my DC's p4 test, it wasn't incredibly useful as we only got the high level scores but it did show that she was doing very well whereas parents' night feedback they said she was 'fine/middling'. I do not understand why the results aren't shared without a fuss - the whole 'but it should be a broader basket of feedback' thing falls down because the parents evening and 'report' feedback is so lacking in anything quantifiable at all. If my DC are doing tests, then the results should be shared is my view. If the tests aren't worth doing, they shouldn't be doing them.

I do agree P1 tests are a bad idea because there are so many adjustments for kids starting school.

For those parents who received their children's results - did you just request them informally or was there more to it? Someone above mentioned "jumping through hoops".

That was me.
Two years ago my eldest was a P4 so she "sat" this test.
Afterwards, I had to contact the HT who told me to wait until sept. Then I had to contact her again and made a 1-1 appointment with her.
Was never shown the questions (which I believe nobody has seen in their entirety), but only the topic and whether the answer was correct or not.
Then I was shown a "thermometer" to show where my DD sat in relation to the rest of the p4 in the school.