Losing the will to live-SAT's yr 6

Key Stages 1-2 and SATs advice

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muminTewkes
Posts: 266
Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2010 11:57 am

Losing the will to live-SAT's yr 6

Post by muminTewkes »

...help...

DS1 is doing well at school clearly.
He's just passed for Pates and is really excited about going.
He's just a "normal"bright,bubbly kid.

The school and I(we)haven't always seen eye to eye.
Information is scant,we were never told to enter him in the 11+ or indeed that he was ever capable.
We have,in fact,occasionally caused a fit of a fuss regarding certain teachers and their methods there.
All in all,being very childish...we aren't "liked"although DS1 does appear to be by most of the teachers(one certainly doesn't-our fault I'm afraid :( !)

Last yr(5)he was at level 5 apparently and this year has been a total wash out as far as I can see.

He has learnt nothing despite his teacher this year actually being great-he really is-lively and has ds1's personality down.
Unfortunately ALL they have done since October is SATS SATS SATS...English and Math over and over(with the odd half hr of PE)and ds1 is about to combust.

He adores maths-unfortunately,and I hate saying this as it sounds so boastful,but he is bored out of his skull.Hes done the work,he thirsts for more...but..cynical old me reckons they know hes easily L5 and cant go higher so why bother?
He has actually been known to do a particular teachers filing as well as putting stickers on books for the next class...I mean..is this really what they do with bright children???
He(x2 a week)has a different teacher for maths who does seem to give the "more able" 3 or 4 extension work but even this appears half hearted.

As for the literacy,at first he enjoyed learning the different types of writing that can come up in the SATs..now it seems that all his creativity has been knocked out of him with ENDLESS reading comprehensions.

I think hed believe he'd dies and gone to heaven should he have a history or art lesson!

This is one long moan but this morning he actually cried at the prospect of going to school.He seems overcome with frustration and anger at it all.

So,people what to do?Is there anything to be done even?Is this just how it is with SATs?

Apologies for my moan and Im sorry to any Primary teachers as atm I have a HUGE downer and have for at least this past year/18mths on his school.
mike1880
Posts: 2563
Joined: Sat Sep 27, 2008 10:51 pm

Re: Losing the will to live-SAT's yr 6

Post by mike1880 »

Our daughter is having exactly the same experience. It makes me sad and very, very angry. Last year she was really flying, L5 across the board, but this whole year has been a total waste of time and really very destructive. All she has learnt is to "work to target" instead of being stretched and challenged. She herself says that all she has learned is the stuff she did for 11+ and "who's going out with who and who's split up" ( Y6 girls :roll: ). [edit to add - we too have had tears about going to school this year. Words just fail me at this point. Schools really ought to be utterly ashamed of what they are doing to Y6 children.]

At the moment I have two alternative plans:

(1) Keep her off with a D&V bug during SATS week, thereby throwing (as I understand it) a gigantic spanner into the works and wrecking the school's CVA (and serve them right for focussing on that to the exclusion of educating the children in their charge) or

(2) Persuade her to deliberately answer every question incorrectly, with the same effect as above but with the bonus of making it abundantly clear to them that it wasn't just bad luck. (Mrs 1880 thinks this would be a seriously bad example so I probably can't get away with it.)

I'm afraid schools are going to continue to ride roughshod over the education and development of able children until pushy parents like us stand up and fight back.

Mike
muminTewkes
Posts: 266
Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2010 11:57 am

Re: Losing the will to live-SAT's yr 6

Post by muminTewkes »

Mike-thanks for your reply,Im so sorry your DD is experiencing the same :(
I admit I have had the thought myself to keep him off for the very reasons you give!
He's NEVER agree to the second-incapable of not doing his "best!"

The 11+ stuff we did with him from a year ago was his saviour in hindsight.
*sigh*
Its not how it should be.
yoyo123
Posts: 8099
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:32 pm
Location: East Kent

Re: Losing the will to live-SAT's yr 6

Post by yoyo123 »

no it isn;t how it should be....

The majority of Primary teachers agree with you.
Plum
Posts: 284
Joined: Thu Mar 05, 2009 10:26 am

Re: Losing the will to live-SAT's yr 6

Post by Plum »

We had this last year! I had never realised until then what a waste of time Yr 6 was :evil:

DS sat for his GS in September and we knew in early October that he had a place. After that it was all SATS, SATS, SATS. They did mocks and "mock" mocks and then further tests. In one set of tests his scores actually went down. By the end of year 6 his SAT scores were only marginally different to his scores at the end of year 5..... DS found it very frustrating and boring and switched off for most of the year :(

However, on the plus side, once he started senior school he hasn't looked back and has been keen to learn (maybe that was the teachers' aim :wink: ) He has made huge progress, going up several sub levels in Maths and an whole level in English (sorry if that sounds boastful :oops: but it just shows what they can do when their heart is in it!).

Good luck to your DS in Yr 6 - it will get better!
legaraal

Re: Losing the will to live-SAT's yr 6

Post by legaraal »

Does anyone know whether secondary schools are told what a child's SAT's scores are from Year 6 of their primary school? My daughter will be going to a Warwickshire grammar school in Sept. We are Solihull LEA. She too is losing the will to live at her state primary, with SATs being rammed down her throat day in day out. I have told her several times that I don't give a toss what she gets in her SATs now that she has achieved a grammar school place at her first choice school. But I am wondering if she still ought to strive to get maximum "marks" in her SATs in case this information is used for setting etc.

For that matter, will her grammar school be told what she scored in the 11+?

With the SAT's, can anyone confirm that they just get "level 5" (or level 4 or whatever) rather than "5a" or "5b" or some subdivision of their "grade"? I gather that there is not much doubt that she will easily achieve a level 5. If "level 5" is, potentially, the only information which may be communicated to her secondary school about her SATs results, then I would feel fully justified in telling her not to bother about all the pressure which the school is putting on the whole of her class.

We have parents' evening at her primary school next week, and forewarned is forearmed!!
hermanmunster
Posts: 12817
Joined: Fri Sep 15, 2006 9:51 am
Location: The Seaside

Re: Losing the will to live-SAT's yr 6

Post by hermanmunster »

officially she just gets level 5 - unofficially the school give a subgrading.

Appreciate how the whole thing is dire - I agree, kids went to small private primary schools - one did the SATS as an afterthought one day (and they did fine), other school didn't do them at all (didn't cause any problems).

Not sure what to suggest - am getting bolshier these days and maybe after kid has GS palce I would be tempted to home tutor for a term :wink:
Belinda
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Joined: Thu Nov 08, 2007 10:57 pm

Re: Losing the will to live-SAT's yr 6

Post by Belinda »

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Last edited by Belinda on Thu Nov 01, 2012 11:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
yoyo123
Posts: 8099
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:32 pm
Location: East Kent

Re: Losing the will to live-SAT's yr 6

Post by yoyo123 »

Trouble is without the brighter children's results the school doesn't meet targets, so it drops in the league tables - so parents of the brighter children don't send their children there, so the results aren't good and so on.................

I don;t disagree with assessment at all, how else can you know what steps to take next. It's the way the results are used I think is far from ideal.

The levels are "clunky" too. The scores are in bands - so a child can go from 1 mark above bottom of the band to just one mark below and have "made no progress", whereas another could go from 1 mark below top of one band to one mark above bottom of the next and despite only having scored 2 extra points has progressed a whole sub level
mike1880
Posts: 2563
Joined: Sat Sep 27, 2008 10:51 pm

Re: Losing the will to live-SAT's yr 6

Post by mike1880 »

yoyo123 wrote:Trouble is without the brighter children's results the school doesn't meet targets
Exactly my point. If a meaningful proportion of parents of able children, so many of whom are being very badly let let down in Y6 by some schools, made those schools suffer for it in their results, perhaps those schools would stop taking our kids for granted and ignoring them throughout Y6 and would start to fulfill their responsibilities to educate and develop them.

Mike
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