Top tips for yr 6 girls...

[Ilovemybabygirls]

We survived intact for yr 5 but was wondering what to expect for yr 6 and any potential pot holes to look out for!

DD2 is going in to y6, it is 6 years since DD1 started there.

My thoughts for what they're worth:

• Some girls can be quite bitchy in y5-8, so try to stay out of arguments.
• Stay off social media and avoid 50% of the problems.
• Girls mature at different rates, some will be much more developed and may be more like teens, others will still be interested in younger stuff. Everyone will get there in the end. Don't be mean about people at a different stage to you.

• Don't get into silly spats about whose secondary school is 'better'.

• Year 6 is a good time to consolidate things so you are ready for secondary.
• Don't get SATs out of proportion. Yes it is nice to do well and you should try your best, but not worth getting stressed over.
• Enjoy being top of the school, it's only for a year and then you'll be the little ones again.

Brilliant advice from TeenAndTween.

SATs aren't a big deal, even if you/DD have been told it'll determine her sets for secondary secondary schools do their own testing (including CATs) and within a month of starting secondary everyone will have forgotten about SATs.

That's not strictly accurate. (With the old SATs with NC levels at least). The y6 SAT levels are used to measure progress and expectations at Secondary. My DD was not making sufficient progress in English in y9 compared with y6, and so was given some intervention. DD's reports in y10/11 mentioned GCSE English and Maths grades in relation to her incoming SATs. Again, had she been underperforming, they would have intervened. So underperforming in SATs can lead to lower expectations in Secondary, leading to no intervention.

Dd did poorly in her sats, worse than expected - she had exceeded her patheticly easy ks3 targets at the end of y7, when i questioned the school about the inappropriate targets they told me that they were generated on the basis of her sats results and nothing else, despite the cats tests/teachers asessments etc nothing mattered, they would increase her targets but her access to intervention or help would always be based on progress from Ks2 sats. She is a hard worker so hopefully she won't need help to achieve her potential.