The SATS con and our education system

[Kompany Car]

To get this thread back on track and talk about SATs

Firstly don’t blame the schools. SATS are an imposed system of grading children. If schools do not get “good “grades of level 4 or above their OFSTED rating will be severely compromised. Senior management jobs can depend on this so of course they are going to jump through the externally imposed hoops politicians have given them.

We always used to sum up the futility of SATs with the saying “you don’t fatten a pig by constantly weighing it.”

Out of curiosity, as I know you were in the teaching profession, what did they do to measure school performance before OFSTED and SATS ?

This obsession with measuring performance against arbitrary targets, might work in business, but to me its not conducive to providing a rounded education to kids, in particular at junior school age.

 

[denislawsbackheel]

There were no measures after the 11+ was abolished in Manchester. Schools were responsible for their own curriculum and evaluation.
You are completely correct about arbitrary targets being meaningless.
I remember teaching in a school in Longsight in the 90s and an OFSTED inspection. Remember you were required to get most kids to level 4. This was true whether you were in Prestbury or Longsight. I produced a file that showed that 50% of the year 6 cohort we were being judged on had arrived at the school in the last two years with little or no English. We had no chance of getting them to level 4 in English. OFSTED weren’t interested and we were declared inadequate.
The opposite of this was when I went for an interview for a headship of a junior school in leafy Hampshire. A comfortably middle class area where the children were joining them literate and numerate. They had good level 4 results. The chair of governors did not like when I told the interview panel the school was coasting and not pushing the bright pupils at all.

One size does not fit all.

 

[KS55]

amo amas amat
kids are getting fat
they eat their cake and start to pant
amamus amatis amant.

 

[Fred_Quimby]

Oh I do t blame the schools at all, like the OFSTED stuff the pressure in teachers is immense and wrong, learning should be fun and I can tell you now, no one in my daughters class including the teacher is having fun at this time.

I left teaching early many years ago (16). When I became a Maths teacher at 41 I used to find ways to make my classes interesting, spending many hours weighing up different styles and content, always thinking will this keep them interested and excited? I really had a great time and seldom had problems of discipline in my lessons and got good grades for the kids to boot. We did a lot of ‘discovery’ work where we found out things for ourselves.

Move on 10 years and it all changed with a new head at a different school; suddenly we had to give every student a grade every 1/2 term and a grade and report every term and we moved to a fortnightly timetable. To cut a long story short I shared groups with several other teachers and ended up teaching 600 pupils some I only saw once a fortnight. Work that out. I was spending all my time writing grades and reports and consequently I just ended up doing the quickest and easiest preparation. You can guess that the discipline in my lesson went downhill and I ended up taking early retirement. The head was only interested in grades and reporting to parents. So sad as I loved teaching.

 

[Alvin-blue-qhd]

School without exams is like PL without matchs.
Pressure, hardwork, excitement or bitterness, so many memories.

 

[TinFoilHat]

Currently my 11 year old is coming upto her SATS test, it’s a fucking nightmare putting these kids under this pressure at that age, all to benefit the school and not the kids. Year 6 across the country have been identified as been low on spelling and grammar, this is all down to the COVID years, when they should have been learning Phonics etc. This has impacted on them in a big way (my daughter in particular really struggles). Now the schools should have realised this a few years ago, but no instead they persisted in teaching them fucking French and other subjects which are not a priority.
I feel the education system has fundamentally failed this group of kids, now some might say these other subjects are important for a well rounded education, well if that’s the case why have all these subjects been effectively dumped since Jan to enable these kids to pass the SATS so the school looks good? I went to a parents evening and asked why kids where been taught a lot of stuff in English, that they will probably never use in life, the teacher said they won’t even use them in secondary education it’s all for SATS!
I know the government set the curriculum and it’s a long time since I was at school but the stuff they are cramming in their heads as such and early age and the pressure they are under is ridiculous. I’ve told my daughter not to worry one jot, try her best that’s it, I don’t want her panicking or getting upset, which she does sometimes. Anyway rant over.

I was unlucky enough to be involved in the first ever SATs.

I still remember the fear of failure. When I got the mark which was less than I expected I was miserable for weeks. I'm convinced now it's a core memory which prevented me from reaching my full potential. Because I saw myself as a failure. Any success I still have in work or life imposter syndrome follows. I put it all down to those fucking tests at such a young age. I was boxed in to my future that day.

 

[willipp]

School without exams is like PL without matchs.
Pressure, hardwork, excitement or bitterness, so many memories.

My school years were like City in the 80/90's then, fucking shite and mostly miserable.

 

[Kompany Car]

We did a lot of ‘discovery’ work where we found out things for ourselves.

To me this is what's missing. The best teachers I've ever had all could derive formulas from first principles and theorems using both graphical and mathematical means.

Teachers in other subjects could talk around the area of study.

This allows kids to get a deep understanding at the most fundamental level and how it fits in with the world around them. I can appreciate why in isolation purely from a basic maths point of view areas such as surds, binomial expansions, second order (quadratics) even simple trigonometry can appear little use. They all need context and not just someone drawing a triangle and working out angles or lengths of the side, or drawing a parabola on a graph. It needs to be applied maths.

The problem is that the structure of the syllabus doesn't allow the exploration to happen.

 

[City Hobgoblin]

Currently my 11 year old is coming upto her SATS test, it’s a fucking nightmare putting these kids under this pressure at that age, all to benefit the school and not the kids. Year 6 across the country have been identified as been low on spelling and grammar, this is all down to the COVID years, when they should have been learning Phonics etc. This has impacted on them in a big way (my daughter in particular really struggles). Now the schools should have realised this a few years ago, but no instead they persisted in teaching them fucking French and other subjects which are not a priority.
I feel the education system has fundamentally failed this group of kids, now some might say these other subjects are important for a well rounded education, well if that’s the case why have all these subjects been effectively dumped since Jan to enable these kids to pass the SATS so the school looks good? I went to a parents evening and asked why kids where been taught a lot of stuff in English, that they will probably never use in life, the teacher said they won’t even use them in secondary education it’s all for SATS!
I know the government set the curriculum and it’s a long time since I was at school but the stuff they are cramming in their heads as such and early age and the pressure they are under is ridiculous. I’ve told my daughter not to worry one jot, try her best that’s it, I don’t want her panicking or getting upset, which she does sometimes. Anyway rant over.

League table culture and the tyranny of Ofsted

 

[Eccles Blue]

I was involved with the first year that SATs were introduced. I was an examiner and we were, for the first two years, told to make it fun for the children. They were more lesson based than paper based, apart of course from English and Maths.
I remember going into one of 'my' schools on the day of the Science SAT (they did almost all subjects then) and one of the tasks was for the children to predict whether an item would sink or float. In this particular classroom there was a slightly raised platform and the teacher had put the water tray just below the 'platform' with the items to be guessed at on the platform. The first few children did well they guessed and checked. The next group went over just as I'd arrived in the room and a child went to pick up an item and, just as both the teacher and myself were about to point out that her shoelace was undone she duly tripped over said shoelace and (luckily) fell into the water. Without batting an eyelid the teacher asked the pupils if the soaking wet child had floated or sunk!!
Cue hysterical laughter from the Classroom Assistants, the teacher and the examiner!! The children looked bemused for a second but we all know what happens when someone goes into that sort of laughter. They joined in. :-)

I was an Advisory Teacher at the time, involved in teaching the teachers how to use computers and suddenly our jobs were all changed, the AT for Science, English, Maths, IT, Art and RE were all made to get involved in testing that the teachers were doing the SATs properly. Although there was a lot of pressure on the Advisory Teachers we were instructed, and for the most part followed that instruction, to make it as relaxed as possible.

Those were the days when we could all do a good job without feeling as if our lives depended on SATs. They say they've reduced the number of subjects tested nowadays but those subjects are INTENSE. There's no need for it. JMHO