Off Topic TESTING TIMES

It's that time of the year again, for all of us involved in Primary Schools, SATS week kicks off tomorrow, we can do no more other than keep fingers crossed, pray and hope (something us long suffering City fans are good at!)

Also, GCSE and A Level testing underway, so all the best, good luck to all involved in education, and also to any parents on here with children sitting tests, good luck. Stay calm and chill.

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My daughter starts her SATS tomorrow- She’s nervous

 

Mine are all through the system now, last one started Uni last September. It was strange not having to buy School Uniforms for the first time in 24 years.

Best of luck to your pupils & children. I hope they all fulfil their potential.

 

Anyone said it yet?????



All those holidays they get them bloody teachers don't know they're born...

 

All the best to your school and its pupils (and to any other teachers on here and their schools).

On breakfast duty in morning so an extra early start.

 

While this meaningless charade goes on, the real agenda slips by:

https://literacytrust.org.uk/news/o...y-skills-they-need-tell-if-news-real-or-fake/

 

My Year 2s are doing brilliantly. So proud of them. I mean we don’t know the results, but they’re taking it like troopers.

 

What do you mean ?

 

SATS is one of the biggest piss takes going. Totally pointless and unfair pressure put on young kids.

 

In short:

For all of these tests, particularly at KS2, they matter not, apart from to be able to rank primary schools. At the start of KS3 most secondary schools retest their intake, in some form or another, anyway.

They cause untold stress and schools are often literally dropping the teaching of other subjects, to literally teach-to-test in English SPAG and Maths (in Y6).

Meanwhile, as the Nat Lit Trust report, shockingly low levels of critical literacy are apparent in these school kids.

Any teacher worth their salt will know their children's abilities, as they use formative assessment day-in-day-out and whilst I'm not all out opposed to exams per se, SATS, in my opinion, need scrapping or reforming.

 

Some of that pressure comes from the schools themselves and how they play the whole SATs thing. We have had very very few stressed out kids over the year because of how we present SATs to them. It’s our jobs to deflect that pressure from them. Unfortunately, a handful of teachers (and I’m not blaming them because I don’t know their circumstances that they’re put in themselves by their schools) pass that stress on.


I might be in the minority but I think the Reading and Maths SATs are useful to an extent as setting a standard.

 

“It’s our jobs to deflect that pressure from them.”

No it’s not. It’s your job to educate them, there should not be any pressure for you to deflect.

 

Writing is currently teacher assessed (it used to be a SAT for those that don’t know) but it’s a bigger mess. Non-moderated schools have published higher % of children at the ‘expected standard’ than the moderated ones for the last three years showing this system is even more flawed than the SATs one because schools can essentially publish whatever they need to keep their headteachers and academy sponsors happy. Even in this system, teachers aren’t always trusted.

 

Educating them comes without saying.

The pressure is there from the Government, from academy sponsors, from headteachers and senior leaders, from parents, etc. The pressure is there unfortunately. It’s there in some schools more than others.

 

Most of the pressure comes externally though - the league tables - which encourage competition (amongst other things) between schools.

Competition amongst school means the kids who do well are ok, but the rest?????

 

Keep the results in-house (which would curb the stress and the school's obsession).

 

I think SATs are more ‘broken’ at the top of the chain than they are at the bottom.

 

Yes and it’s bullshit.

I wonder how much better kids would learn with a curriculum that isn’t dictated by the need to deliver good SATS results. What is it, a week of this, a week of that, if you don’t get it by the end of the week then tough titties.

 

Pretty much.

There are schools that stop all other subjects at Christmas and just so reading, maths and grammar. It’s ridiculous they even have to do that to ‘achieve’ results.

 

Everyone has their own story but I never had any homework until I was 11.

At primary school, the emphasis was play until I was 7 or 8. Now, at this age, kids will have done Phonics screening, KS1 SATS and possibly the new multiplication assessment in Y4