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.

I have a DD in Yr11 who has no SATS results - her school was part of a boycott that year. She was the only pupil from her primary to join her secondary school. Schools in the new area did not take part in the boycott.

Yrs 7, 8 & 9 passed without any significant issues. However, late in Yr10 I asked why her GCSE targets were mostly Bs when she was already achieving higher results in some subjects. It turned out that it was because she had no SATS results - she had been given 'B' as a target across the board. I did not realise that this was important until other pupils with higher targets were given extra support and opportunity to repeat coursework or controlled assessments because they had not reached their targets.

In short, her lack of SATS results has held her back. It would be nice to think is unusual but the way in which schools use data is not very transparent. It took ages to get to the bottom of the problem and we have had many meetings to get things changed.

The current year 6 are the final year taking SATS as they exist at present. If your DC is a year 5 she won't be sitting them anyway. No one at my school seems to know what they will be replaced by yet. The advantage of having a year 5 is that they will at least be spared the mass of past papers that the year 6s usually have to do, as there won't be any.

Essex, can you tell me where you got that info, we have recently been told that they WILL be sitting Sats next year.

sorry, forgot to say please.

I wish she was being spared the past papers... at the moment they are being tested all morning every morning alongside the y6's. She comes home with a headache and feeling crappy as she is getting stressed about the tests and so overthinking every question and panicing herself into getting loads wrong. Given a non test environment she can do it no problem. It makes me furious that she is under this strain at 9. Will be going to speak to her teacher about it in the morning.

My primary. There will be some kind of exams but not the current Sats. The year 5s and below are on the new national curriculum, so past Sats papers will not be relevent as they have been written for the old curriculum. Given that there is no nationally agreed levelling system to replace the old levels, and schools seem to be doing there own thing, Im not sure that secondary schools will get much useful information from primaries in the future. If the children are coming from a variety of feeder schools, all using different grading schemes it is going to be very complicated trying to compare them.

it is this changing of levels plus curriculum which first made me consider HE. i attended a conference last week in which it became clear that these changes will throw an already strained system into chaos. The teachers not only have to get up to speed with all the crazy curriculum changes, but also with how and where kids will fit into the new non-levels assessment bands...which will be different from school to school and bear no relation to secondary assessment. The didnt mention the sats replacement, so if you have links to any info about that essex i'd appreciate a look.
If we havent already lost the best teachers in our school i cant see many wanting to stick arond after this. It's ridiculous.

I don't get that hysteria at our school at all Windowdonkey,

They (staff) say they will simply use the levels until a new system is introduced. Changes to he curriculum are normal, people just get on with it. The basics are still the same (focus on literacy and maths, for example)

It will all work out I am sure.

Have you talked to her teacher about how she is feeling and especially the boredom / stress? I would start there, especially as the teacher is doing it for the first time.

Combining he 5 and 6 sounds disastrous from the pov of subjecting the Yr 5s to SATS twice!

I took my DD out in Y6 and homeschooled her. Fast forward to Y7 in secondary and it hasn't been a problem at all - they wrote to her primary school and asked what her predicted SATs grades would've been and they made a best guess as to what sets to put her in at the start. Some sets were wroong but within a term she'd been moved up/down where appropriate and it was no big deal. Her target grades have been a bit odd - the school said that as they had no SATs to go on they automatically put her end of year target grades at the lowest possible. But that hasn't been a problem either as she's felt good about herself when she's easily passed those targets.

In summary, your DD will be fine as long as you pick a secondary where they regularly asses sets and children get moved as and when appropriate.

I wouldn't worry about the whole sets problem. Most teachers are pretty good at assessing from a child's work and involvement in class which one they should be in. I don't know where you are, but not all secondary schools have ability-streamed sets in y7.

In terms of homeschooling, I know a few kids who were home-schooled up to 6th form, and they had no problems either socially or academically, then went on to get into very good universities. There's a huge homeschooling community in North America, with loads of resources and forums for advice and support that you could tap into as well.

I couldn't agree with you more that kids are tested far too much and too early here in the UK. Better to let them learn through play and experiences rather than rote learning for exams!