KS2 SATS 2016

[loobylou]

KS2 results do matter - Secondary schools are judged on progression from them.

Schools that say they take 'no notice' of them are not being totally truthful as they need to track from starting point which are KS2 tests.

If you look at DfE Secondary performance table you can see how important these 'starting points' are!

Are they always judged from that starting point? Or can schools choose their own starting point if they can show it to be robust and measurable?
I ask because in dd's school her predictions and expectations definitely stem from her CATs results rather than her SATs results. I know this because her SATs results were fantastic and her CATs surprisingly poor and all her predictions are a level lower than her peers in her sets, whereas if they were from SATs she'd at least have to be on a par with them.

At a risk of sounding cynical - do you trust those CAT results or is it possible that your DD's CATs and predictions were 'carefuly adjusted' by the school, so that she can easily exceed them and the school can take credit for all the hard work? I have been told such things happen sometimes...

I trust them because everyone else did so much better than her!! So I can't see why hers would have been manipulated down in isolation. Setting does not happen in her school till year 8 so the sets were on the basis of results in year 7. She says she's the only pupil in her set with such a low prediction. As it's a selective school I don't think there's as much Value Added to strive for...

[Guest55]

Secondaries are judged from KS2 tests - CAT tests are not really designed to be used to set individual student targets and many schools don't use them.

Fischer Family Trust [FFT] produce data for all schools to estimate cohort and individual targets.

http://www.fft.org.uk/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[PurpleDuck]

Loobylou, you are right, an isolated case would not make sense. Maybe she just had a very bad day that day or turned a couple of pages together by accident, skipping a few questions withuot realising? In any case, I bet she will surprise her teachers with her level of achievement at the end of the year.

Guest55, just wondering - if secondary schools use SATs results for measuring students' progress, why do they bother with CATs?

[Guest55]

They have to use the KS2 tests but I think some schools don't trust the results or maybe have students who did not sit them?

I think CATs may give another perspective to some schools but personally I don't think they are worth the money.

I'm told that Ofsted teams tend to ignore CAT data.

[PurpleDuck]

Thank you

[booellesmum]

DD1 recently got given her predicted GCSE grades. They were told these were predicted using a combination of SATs and CAT scores.
I personally would prefer a prediction based on her classwork over the last 3 years, but hey ho!

[enema]

Based on SAT results? I think we'll have to do some grammar work. I have no idea what a subjunctive clause is, fairly sure DD won't, she just about knows what a clause is. First Aid in English might be useful after all. Had hoped we had put prep work behind us for a few months.

[chimera-ma]

Except where KS2 results impact initial class allocation/setting in Year 7 in a school which does not review setting very often, preparing less and performing less well in the SATS in May would seem to have no negative consequence for a DC going forward.

As Guest55 indicated earlier, secondary schools are judged on progress, so if lower than predicted SATs scores due to indifferent effort/preparation are followed by high GCSE results, this is of advantage to the secondary school in respect of contribution to its progression scores.

I would like to think that most secondary schools would be keen to identify students who can be moved on and up quickly from a lower set starting point in Year 7, but that might be hoping for too much.

[Daogroupie]

At our school target grades all the way through KS3 are based 100% on CATS scores. So students who did badly in CATs get great school reports as they are exceeding prediction!

Even the final Y11 school report that arrives after a full set of GCSE Mocks still repeats the target grade from the CATS score but finally does include a predicted grade based on the results of the mocks.

In Y12 predicted A2 grades are based 100% on GCSE results. The only person in one class to get a prediction of all A stars was the only person to get 10 A stars at GCSE. DG

[Guest55]

In KS3 historically two levels of progress was the 'expected' so level 5 should be level 7 - obviously with levels going that expectation is going to change. CATs are not reliable enough [even their publishers say that] to use as individual targets.

A level predictions are usually based on GCSE grades - many schools use ALIS [http://www.cem.org/post-16] but they can be a bit low.