Do you think we should abolish SATs ?
Calling all concerned parents and teachers (especially those in the two unions NUT & NAHT who attended “The Future of Assessment” Conference on the 11th) to please let us know your view on the issue of SATs.
Why do we put our schools our children through these tests which cause stress to whole families and then just tell us what teacher assessments have already told us in past years ?
Teachers have always assessed children’s work and used it to progress learning. Even the Secretary of State has been heard to voice concern about his small child talking and worrying about these tests. So why don’t we remove them and let us start to bring back some sanity in schools and joy in learning and teaching.
Below is the opportunity to have your say. The results will be shared with Ed Balls, Jim Knight and all, including national and local media.
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(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
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How does it benefit my child to know the level of children in a school 200 miles away in different circumstances? I want local in school and LEA tests and more importantly teacher assessment to inform their learning.
Imagine sitting down to 3 maths tests (2 written and 1 mental) ; these tests will include a range of easier-to-very-hard questions based on number, problem solving, data handling, using and applying maths skills, decimals and fractions (amongst others). You would have 45 minutes to answer as many as you can, but invariably the pupils who struggle more with the using and applying trip up over the wordy questions, as they mix up different skills, for example “Work out the size of one side of a pentagon, if the perimeter is 60 cm” Now how many things do you need to know to work that out? Perimeter/division/decimals/pentagon? that is the sort of question that is openly given around 15 SECONDS to answer in the Mental maths test!
I’m rambling a bit, so my main point is: at no point in the year do these pupils get hit with such a range of mathematical tasks, as our long term plans are “chunked” into number, or data handling, and then onto problem solving. These are then looked at over a number of weeks. We then ask these kids to reproduce that knowledge in 3 tests, over 1hr 50 mins!! We THEN label them FAILIING to achieve Level 4, and what do we do? We give them MORE of the subject that they really dislike, when they get to secondary school!! AND it’s the same in Literacy and Science tests…
Let’s get rid of the tests, and get to APP, where we can use the PROFESSIONAL judgement of good teachers as a basis for future learning. How can it be fair to take a snapshot of them over one week?
What about the schools that choose to tutor clever children for sats and leave the lower ability ones behind. My son got a 1c in ks1 sats and is now a 2a/3c in year six no tutoring for him not worth bothering about, his school is a outstanding ofsted school in hertfordshire is it the sats or the school to blame
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