SATS revision help.

thunderbird

balletshoes wrote: »

the best bit of help I can give is - don't revise for this. No point putting any pressure on for these tests whatsoever, they don't mean anything for your child, only for the school. They will not have any effect on your child's future schooling.

If you really want to help, try and ensure your child is well-rested and has a decent breakfast the week of the exams. Apart from that, leave it well alone .

Great advice :T

bylromarha

mrcow wrote: »

They don't mean anything. Her new school will baseline her anyway with their own tests. We take everything primary schools say with a pinch of salt as the results are so varied (and often quite different from the actual levels of the pupil).
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He he. Sorry to take this off topic OP, but Mr cow, its statements like that which are unhelpful. We moderate with 2 of our local secondaries in numeracy and literacy in order that mismatch levelling doesn't happen.

CruisingSaver

I can't add anything to Balletshoes excellent advice earlier on. My DD is also an only child and now in Y8 and the KS2 SATS results had no bearing on how she was assessed in secondary school.

I wish I'd known how little reliance is placed on the SATS results when DD was in Y6 as the primary school was so insistant that they were crucial, when actually they were re-tested in the first few weeks of Y7.

Unfortunately DD's primary school put an awful lot of pressure on the kids which a fair few of us parents were very unhappy about.

However, if you think a little revision will help your daughter settle her nerves then I can recommend BBC Bitesize or the Lett's Revision Guides.

CS x

Seanymph

http://www.theschoolrun.com/

These guys have free downloads as well.

mrcow

bylromarha wrote: »

He he. Sorry to take this off topic OP, but Mr cow, its statements like that which are unhelpful. We moderate with 2 of our local secondaries in numeracy and literacy in order that mismatch levelling doesn't happen.

I'm sure you do. But seriously, many of the levels are so far off, you simply can't work with then going into KS3. I'm not trying to knock the efforts of the KS2 teachers, just stating that the figures are pretty much pointless as often, they just don't match ability. Especially once transition has been factored in, which can cause a significant drop in many.

sooty&sweep

Hi
My son has just started secondary school so just been through KS2 and my daughter will be doing KS1 this year.
SATs are useful to help you assess how a child is doing and are an early warning of if there is a problem. KS1 SATs helped identify that my son has dyslexic tendencies. They are also used to assess a schools performance.
But nobody puts their KS2 results on their CV so in the scheme of things they aren't worth getting stressed about !
When your daughter goes to secondary school they will do CAT tests to assess them there so they don't use the SATS results.
My son quite enjoyed doing his SATS because his teacher advised that they should have a bacon sandwich for breakfast which my son insisted on !

Jen

Giraffeseeker

I am fairly senior in a large secondary school and I would agree that KS2 SATs are not important in terms of setting etc when the children move to secondary - some schools do not put into sets for the first term at least, or even for the whole of the first year, and they do their own assessment, via testing or teacher assessment to move children up and down in the sets on a fairly regular basis.

KS2 SAT results ARE however, important to secondary schools in a different way which comes into play at KS4 - and I know because I spend half my life in the company of the KS2 data belonging to the KS4 pupils I am responsible for.

Schools are now increasingly judged by Ofsted on the progress pupils make from KS2 - KS4. Now that there is no formal testing at KS3, pupils are expected to make 3 levels progress between their KS2 SATs and their GCSE results. So increasingly secondary schools will base their pupils target grades at GCSE level on the pupils KS2 SAT results.

This means pupils will be judged throughout KS4 as being underachieving or overachieving based on a target grade which is based what they got at KS2, because that is the data by which the school will be judged by Ofsted.

Should a child achieve their natural potential in KS2 SATs, their target grades based on 3 levels progress will be achieveable but challenging.

Should they overachieve at KS2, their target grades at GCSE are likely to be too high for their ability. Some pupils would take this as a challenge, but in my experience most in this position will spend the entire two GCSE years feeling like a failure because they cannot attain the targets that have been set for them. This target grade that will appear on every school report, on many pieces of work, this grade that they are not meeting will be discussed at every parents evening (instead of celebrating what the pupil is doing well).

In a good school, those pupils identified as underachieving will be subject to a number of measures to try and make them meet the target grade - constant letters and calls to parents, sessions after school and at lunchtime, etc etc. This is all well and good where a pupil is lazy and is genuinely not reaching their potential in a particular subject(s).

For those who overachieved at KS2 though, who are trying to achieve a grade which is just really too much for them, this can be incredibly stressful, especially when this may be across 10 different subjects where all the teachers are trying to get them to the grade they *think* they should be capable of.

Why do some pupils overachieve at KS2? Because they are "coached" to do well in the SATs test, either by parents or by the school.

The KS2 SATs should be a "check" of where the pupil is at that point in their schooling, and an assessment of their ability. It should not be seen as a "test" or an "exam" by the children.

So, in answer to your question - ensure your daughter does homework set by the school, but do not spend time on additional revision with your daughter, just make sure she is not stressed out by the idea of the SAT and is calm and rested on the day. The school will handle everything else. You can then rest assured that whatever the results say will be a true "snapshot" of your daughters ability at that point in her schooling.

(For reference, 3 levels progress means Level 3 = GCSE D; Level 4 = GCSE C; Level 5 = GCSE B; and Level 6 = GCSE A - level 6 has ony recently been able to be tested at KS2 and requires kids to sit an additional test paper - not all primary schools bother with this)

Spendless

What I do know my son's Secondary school did with the yr6 SATs results is mixed the kids up so there was a range of abilities in each form. I know this because I saw the form list when I attended parents open evening following the first transition day before son moved to that school, so of a class of around 28 had 6 at level 5,6 at level 3 and the rest at level 4. Only English and Maths were set by ability in yr 7, the rest of subjects were complete form taught. That changed in yr 8 when most subjects were ability set.