How does a secondary school deal with an incoming y7 who hasnt done sats?

[TheWindowDonkey]

I'm aware that, in the first instance SATS are the methid by which many schools decide 'sets' when the y7 pupils come in, and that although many additionally test to assess thi the sats still have bearing on ks3 expectations.
i am thinking of taking my alternately stressed and bored (depending on whether they are testing, which she htes, or copying from the borad whilst y6 test, which she also hates) y5 dc out of our school for y6 and homeschooling her, which means she wont have done sats. I'd just like to understand the pssible concequences of this once she gets to secondary.

My DS had not done sats as at private school.

Not a big deal, they make them all do CATs anyway.

It was also trial and error, for English they put him in bottom set then after 3 weeks moved him to middle set.

Most schools have a degree of flexibility abd use their own judgement

In these parts they don't go to Secondary until Year 8 so the SATS were a year ago. So they use the results forwarded by the middle school at the end of year 7.

But in the first few weeks of Secondary they do test after test and any assessments in order to gauge where they are up to.

We test before they arrive and don't go on the sats for setting.

DS went to a private school y6-7 & started yr8 with no KS2 SATs. I said he had been high ability previously in a transfer letter, but I honestly have no idea how they placed him except that CATs were not involved. A good school will soon move them if they are in a mismatched set.

My children's school uses the year 6 sat results to set end of year /stage targets. So high sats results, high target grades. They use them for value added data too. So ensures students are kept on track? Late developers though end up with lower targets so danger of coasting although the teachers have told me they like children who overachieve their targets as it makes them look good.

Oh and they use the sats for setting initially along with cat test results.

Sats are secondary to CATs in some schools. They don't set until the CATs have been taken (in the first week).

The only way my sons' secondary school uses KS2 SAT results is to set targets.

They use their own tests to decide setting for Maths etc.

I completely understand your position about the KS2 SATs, but my younger children (both in Y6) would be very disappointed to miss the post-SATs activities. Amongst other things, they do a history project, produce a yearbook, put on an art exhibition, and put on a play.

Our school does tonnes & tonnes of fun activities in yr6 before SATs, There were a dozen fun not-SAT things DD did that yr before May. But sounds like some schools are just exam factories. :( I wonder if our school is so great because it's not 'Outstanding' or high achieving, to keep our local kids engaged they have to have a diverse activity approach.

DD's school uses the SATS results for data tracking and initial setting. But they get tested all the time at high school so they would be able to use those results. They just wouldn't have the same start point as the other students.

Dd went in to year 7 with no SATS. They only set for maths for the first year & put her in the middle set, she was moved up to the top set within 2 weeks. It shouldn't be an issue for a competent school. They did CAT tests half way through the first term but said that their purpose was to indentify potential underachievers rather than for setting.

Dd is now in y7 & I was amused at a recent parent's evening when I noticed that they have gone back in time to give her L5s in her KS2 SATS no-one was willing to admit responsibility for that - maybe it was the computer!

Now in y9 ... FFS I must start previewing

you might also want to look at the admission criteria for your chosen secondary school as some primary school s get priority on the admission criteria.

I was going to say the same as cece. The secondary schools in our area have feeder schools as the main criteria.

Ditto, especially for oversubscribed schools.

The schools near us told us that they don't use KS2 SAT results for setting. They re-test, then set in second half of first term (or even y8). So I don't think it matters if you homeschool then move to secondary at Y7.

But - If the testing is causing the stress, is avoiding it in Y6 the best thing? Could the stress / boredom be tackled in a different way? Tests are a pretty dominant feature now of secondary, further and higher education - just wondering if it would be better to try and find techniques to help her with the stresses of testing during the SATs (given results are ultimately irrelevant to her schooling future) than to pull her out of school and avoid the stress. I am not convinced that we do our children any favours by helping them avoid stresses (as opposed to supporting them in dealing with the stresses. (This article maybe of interest - www.heysigmund.com/anxiety-in-kids/ )

The boredom thing is another issue...but I would speak to the school about that as well - DD has been put into extension classes in yr 6 and has done some really interesting other stuff so not just all about SATs

Dd3 in y7 with no SATS. Despite a long phone conversation with the transition officer before she started, they put her in what I am assuming by the size of it, was the bottom set for maths - swiftly tested and moved into top set as the teacher knows her older sister! - and I still have no idea which set she's in for English, although she says people get a wide range of levels for bits of work. She did do CATS at school in Oct/Nov. Just had her second progress report and she still has no end of y7 or end of y9 target levels.

I don't think this situation is ideal (she finds it odd that she hasn't got any targets when everyone else has), but i don't think it's actually affecting her education.

Thanks for the replies so far, giving me food for though.
Dd is in a school where y5 and 6 are together. The teacher is relatively new (last one was fabulous and one of the reasons we chose the school as we had friends whose kids had her as a final year teacher and couldnt praise her enough.).
There seem to be a lot of issues between certain pupils this year (i volunteer at the school so know this first hand, and know dd isnt exaggerating about the amount of time the teacher has to deal with these issues in class time) and although they dont involve dd directly they do effect her quality of schooling.
I'm not looking to directly shelter dd from tests per se, but having seen first hand the way the kids seem to be being steered (and i mean at all schools, not just dd's. A recent governours conference was a big eye opener!) it does depress me that primaries are indeed turning into factories where we churn out kids able to sit tests but who dont actually LEARN anything along the way and i am wondering if a year at home, where dd can re-embrace learning for learnings sake might help reset her mindset and help her love school again when she starts at secondary.
Although i get where the poster who suggested that she needs the experience comes from, I do find the idea of prepping our kids for the stress of exams at 10/11 ridiculous. Surely we are just teaching them to write themselves off early if they have a bad day and don't do well or are just not strong at exams At this point in their lives. Experiencing this level of stress wont necessarily make them more able to cope with it when they sit the next big batch at gcse level, in fact if they find it too hard at this stage and don't cope with it well i can see how it would be detrimental to later exam experiences. I'd personally prefer to delay this particular 'life experience' to a time when she is more grown up and emotionally able to cope with being happy with where she is academically.
The bottom line for me is that I can see the decisions being made about our kids education, the changes in assessment that are occuring this year, the increased expectations of curriculum changes, the increasing pressure of results for results sake, are all about international league table position and nothing to do with raising a generation of people who are confident, motivated autonomous learners. And thats not a failing of any teacher, but of the crap they are expected to wade through before any actual learnig can be done.
As I say we havent decided what we are doing, I am at this point informing myself as much as possible so that we can make the best choice. I have no doubt that any school will claim to have flexibility in its sets and mobility for its students, I was interested in how often that genuinely occurs.

I also know dd would be able to cope with the test with our support, but i hate the fact that she is already aware that the way to succeed is to sit loads of past papers...and where is he intelligence or joy or autonomy in that??!

Oooh my children are small but I've floated the idea of homeschooling yr 6 (and maybe yr5) as so much is geared to SATS. I love the idea of homeschooling but my daughter loves her infant school. I want her to do secondary/GCSEs etc and I think a few years in the middle would be brilliant to explore other things.

I've wondered about targets etc, but the fact its all so target driven is one of the reasons I flirt with homeschooling!

I just went and looked at some of dd's exercise books - they have a sticker on the front with y6 level, y7 target levels (with space for revision), and autumn, spring and summer term progress levels. Some of the teachers have written in y7 targets, although these clearly aren't 'official' as they're not on the system that produces the report, and one teacher has written in a y6 level, similar to Flug's experience!

Having an older daughter at the school, who didn't start until y9 (with no previous levels), I'm not concerned about the school not supporting/encouraging dd3. Although dd2 found it highly annoying to have C/B targets for her GCSEs (seemingly plucked out of the ether, I never found out where they came from), her teachers were all clear that they expected more.

I have to say that the two grammar schools of which I have experience clearly totally disregard ks2 results.

dh is secondary school teacher. He says that they don't get the SATs results until well into the Christmas term, way too late for them to be of any use, hence CAT tests are taken in the first week of Y7 and the results of these tests are used for setting.

It clearly varies from school to school. I know that my dd's school talk to the y6 teacher of every new y7 over June/July/Aug, so even if they don't have official SATS results sent over, they do have every child's levels.

"it does depress me that primaries are indeed turning into factories where we churn out kids able to sit tests but who dont actually LEARN anything"

And high schools are GCSE factories. At a year 10 parents evening last week of the the SLT gave a presentation about how to revise. He said that he doesn't like the system being so geared to pass exams rather than actually learn a subject, but he can't do anything about it.

In Y7 here SATS results were used to make the maths sets they went in in the first week and they were also used to make the official targets for all the subjects.