11 Plus Exams Forum

Last year, a new head-teacher at DD2's school happened at the same time as a fairly weak Y6 cohort, so the SATs results were not improved as the governors hoped they'd be (not that they'd been poor to start with).

The Head was blamed for this, so this year, the staff are going all out to improve the results, with head going in and taking the top tables for higher-level work, freeing up the other tables. It's been SATs SATs SATs all the way, and is quite frenzied.

The children were sent home for the holidays with 4 papers to do.

What has really annoyed DD2 is they teachers telling the pupils "You've GOT to do well with your SATs, because the schools you're moving to use them to decide which set you'll be in, so if you want to be in a high set, practice more". DD2 counters this by telling her friends that none of the local comps use the SATs to set children, and the grammars don't set for at least two years, if at all.

We did ask the question when going round the comps, and all told us that they didn't trust SATs as some primaries tutor more than others. They all run their own base-line tests to assess new pupils within the start of Y7 rather than using the SATs.

The school I work at now uses Yr6 SATs to assess its new students. The decision was made due to funding cuts, as testing the new cohort was costly. I suspect it will become increasingly common for schools to save money in this way.

SATS results are meaningless for those chosen for grammar schools as those schools use the entrance exam mark for class formation

"SATS results are meaningless for those chosen for grammar schools as those schools use the entrance exam mark for class formation"

No they don't.

I tonk you meant to write ' no they aren't ' I think. Let's agree to disagree, I heard this from a few heads of grammar schools in Brum area

I meant "No they don;t"

Grammar schools do not, in my experience, use the entrance exam mark for class formation.

I think it's impossible to generalise.
Some will and some won't.
They don't all follow the same system. You would need to ask the school.

I totally agree. All I was trying o say is that for grammar in Brum they do not use sats exam results for class formation. They use entrance exam results in a very subtle way plus distance and people commuting from same area.

And there is much mythology on the subject..............

What are the baseline tests that some schools use in year 7 to do their own setting? And how many weeks do they run maths and english unsetted before they re-group children according to their own test results?

Depending on the school's "baseline" test, one might be lucky and find that all the boring old SATs practice helps get a better mark in the baseline test?