would SATS results influence your choice of primary school ?

weepingtree

Simple question really

milliebear00001

Unless they were appallingly low, probably not...and even then, those results would only prompt me to ask questions, rather than rule a school out.

...but I am a teacher, and familiar with some of the more unsavoury and undesirable ways in which better results are often achieved.

There are other things that would matter far more to me.

balletshoes

nope, I asked the woman I was buying my house from which school her children attended, and what she thought of it. Then I went to visit the school before I put it down as my preference. I didn't look up the ofsted report or the league tables.

peachyprice

As long as they were reasonable, no.

I would be more impressed with a school that taught a rich and varied curriculum rather than one which spent the majority of yrs 2 and 6 coaching the pupils through SAT's.

grey_lady

Hhmm - quality of teaching / education and good exam results are fairly significant to me.

Spendless

It depends. An on the doorstep Primary which the majority of local kids attended meaning my kids would meet children living nearby and could eventually start walking to and from school with them and build friendship groups up would appeal to me more than a further away, I'd always have to drive for pick ups/drops offs and they'd not live anywhere near their classmates, even if the 1st got worse sats than the last.

If you're talking lower sats results going hand in hand, with poor attendance, constant changes of leadership, teachers frequently leaving/being off sick with stress then yes it would affect my view.

gingin_2

As long as they weren't dire.

Our catchment school had good results but I just didn't get a good feel for it. We chose a school with poorer results but a lovely warm feel and I haven't regretted the decsion, after seeing one child go the whole way through and another in Year 3 now.

The results can vary year by year as well.

balletshoes

grey_lady wrote: »

Hhmm - quality of teaching / education and good exam results are fairly significant to me.

but the SATS results for primary schools in England and Wales are fairly pointless in my opinion. The year 6 kids in my daughter's school (and my nieces) are coached for SATS for about 4 months before SATS time, in effect this is 4 months that they are learning nothing new. I went through the education system in Scotland, they don't have SATS there.

In addition, kids with absences can affect SATS results for the school, so if you only use SATS as your deal-breaker without taking anything else into account, you're not getting the full picture of the school at all.

milliebear00001

grey_lady wrote: »

Hhmm - quality of teaching / education and good exam results are fairly significant to me.

All of which your local school may have, without necessarily having fantastic SATS results.

Many schools simply spend all of year 6, forcing children through test paper after test paper in order to ensure they get a decent level on test day. These children often have much bigger issues at secondary school, when this approach falls apart. I also know of several schools who simply 'help out' the children on the day

milliebear00001

balletshoes wrote: »

but the SATS results for primary schools in England and Wales are fairly pointless in my opinion. The year 6 kids in my daughter's school (and my nieces) are coached for SATS for about 4 months before SATS time, in effect this is 4 months that they are learning nothing new. I went through the education system in Scotland, they don't have SATS there.

In addition, kids with absences can affect SATS results for the school, so if you only use SATS as your deal-breaker without taking anything else into account, you're not getting the full picture of the school at all.

Small schools often appear to have poor SATS results too. One child's poor result can massively impact the school's percentage scores in any one year.

GobbledyGook

No. There is far, far, far more important things in a school than SATS results imo.

Some schools have poor SATS results because they refuse to stop teaching for months to train kids to pass a test. Equally some schools have great results because they do nothing else, which costs children masses of valuable learning time.