School lost childs SATS results

[zippytiptoes]

I have a lovely friend who has two girls who moved to a secondary school in September. One of her girls hasn't settled and is feeling really unhappy at school. She is in different sets to her sister and feels she hasn't made any proper friends. The girls have never been parted before. She's a lovely kid and there's nothing not to like about her.

At a recent parents evening where they went to discuss their kids development and progress, my friends noticed a gap in the table where it came to her daughters English SATS results from her last year at Primary School. When my friend questioned this, they were told that the primary school had lost them.

My friend wonders that if they had the correct results that her daugher may be in a higher set and may feel less isolated and unhappy. I don't really know how to advise her. She has made an appointment with the school to discuss the situation, but no one has got back to her. What do you think she could do to help her daughter and find out about the SATS results?

At my DC's school, they don't use the SATS results at all in setting for classes, they are only used for the progression data. So not having them might not make any difference.

It is not unusual for DC who were together in sets at primary to be separated at secondary. The increase in student numbers and number of sets could account for that.

I would suggest she focuses on why her daughter isn't settled rather than anything else. If they can help her feel happy in school, then she will hopefully start to do better academically.

I doubt that one missing set of results is going to result in your friend's daughter moving sets. Most schools use a mixture of SATs, reports from primary and their own tests to decide on sets. Sometimes it depends on which language options the students chooses as well.

Couldn't your friend just give the secondary school the SATs results which she presumably received herself in written form from the school last summer? Otherwise, it should be fairly straightforward to get the primary school to write a letter to the secondary school.

It's not clear which school your friend wishes to have an appointment with but if it's the secondary I think she should concentrate on getting them to come up with strategies to help her dd settle in (after-school activities, a buddy system, a teacher mentor etc) rather than concentrating on one missing set of SATs results.