Primary SATs

[shirtyshirt]

I may have got the wrong end of the stick but I thought I read on here something about being benchmarked against your yr 6 SATs results in secondary? And if you were GD you would always look like you weren't doing particularly well. But maybe I am confused?

I agree with @TaborlinTheGreat someone with good English at age 11 is likely to be better at history GCSE than someone with poor English at age 11 (assuming not EFL or major disruption to schooling from eg illness).

I never said otherwise....

I was replying more generally. Some people are saying that SATs are pointless and a load of rubbish. I disagree. There tends to be a correlation, though of course individual children can be outside that correlation.
You yourself raised SPAG link to History. Obviously you can have rubbish SPAG and be great at history, or vice versa, but there is a correlation on a cohort level between kids who do well at SATs and those who go on to do well at GCSE.

Glad you got it off your chest! 🙄

Being good at Spag at year 6 give you a boost in year 7. Which carries on throughout.

It's not just about- it not mattering if they have words spelt wrong in their exams.

It's about how the standard of work they have produced in years 7-11 are better because they are good at SPAG. It help with organising their thoughts and making coherent arguments which is fundamental to doing well at history.

Maths/ reading and SPAG are the foundation upon which other subjects are built.

So being good at these will usually mean they do better in all subjects.

Even Art I assume they have to some reading or research on artists and different styles of work. And exam / coursework aren't just producing art work?? Though not sure on that.

And it's not just about the exams not having a mark scheme for SPAG in the exam. The standard of work they have produced over the last 5 years will matter.

Schools are measured, ranked and assessed by their ‘Attainment 8’ and ‘Progress 8’ results. The latter is calculated as better / worse progression than the average expected from their SATs results (specifically, their scaled scores in Reading and Maths - the SPaG score and Writing levels are not used).

Unsurprisingly, given its impact on the school’s performance metrics, schools will track students’ progress against their SATs results for their own understanding and plans for the cohort and for individual children.

Schools vary, however, in what they share with pupils and families - it could be ‘flight paths’; it could be progress vs grades predicted from SATs; it could be progress from other tests taken at the start of Y7; it could be simply raw results from tests done this year; it could be vs FFT-generated targets, which themselves can be set at different levels of ambition at the school’s choice.

However, because the school will, inevitably be publicly judged and measured by the Government on the basis of progress from SATs results, it WILL be something they do track internally. They have no choice.

To clarify again - secondary schools will not measure or target progress based on SPaG or Writing results. Like the Government, they ONLY use scaled scores in Maths and Reading.

Edited to add: and that will be at the ‘score’ level, not the ‘grade’ level. Someone with 119 averaged across Maths / Reading may well have a different target from someone averaging 111, despite them both being ‘GDS’.

DD's "minimum target grades" for most subjects were 9s. We were repeatedly told that pupils should be aiming to do at least as well as these minimum target grades. Meanwhile, most subjects did not predict anything above level 8 for anyone until year 11, because "it is too soon to tell". If it isn't possible to tell in year 10 whether they are likely to get a 9, how is it possible to use SATs to set it as a target?

I suggested that perhaps they could consider using "8+" instead, which would seem more realistic, and also stop them feeling a failure for being predicted an 8.

The year she came in the top 200 in a national competition, I asked her teacher whether she would get "exceeding expectations" on her report that year. No: her performance in school was still only what was expected!

@lanthanum that made me laugh 😆

My oldest child is very academic and got excellent SATs scores. He is now 18 and he has continued to do well. Lots of his friends (who did not score well in SATs and did not pass 11+ etc..) are getting the same results as him. I think children develop and learn at dfferent rates. As parents we need to support as much as we can and chill out a bit especially when children are so young.

One of the main problems that I have found is DS got full marks for his SATs and very nearly full marks in his CATs - he is now in year 8 and his report says that he is below expectations in PE and art because, despite trying hard, he is pretty rubbish at them! His high exam results have predicted him 9s in everything - which clearly is not helpful.

I had the same, son scored extremely highly on SATS but was always “ below expectations in art, DT, and PE- the fact that he is dyspraxic didn’t seem to count!