Year 6 SATs controversy

[yorkie]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-65570684

Heather, from Ipswich, said her son found this week's Sats process "absolutely fine".
"Our school puts very little pressure on our children for the Sats," she told BBC Radio 5 Live. "It's been quite a positive experience."

But Davina Bhanabhai, a writer from Leeds, said her daughter was "really flustered" by the English reading paper on Wednesday.
"Children came out feeling distraught, anxious and stressed. These three emotions are not what we want to bring our children up to experience," she told BBC News.

I don't want to get too bogged down in the specifics of a particular test which sparked this news article, but the issue of SATs generally is a hot topic of debate at this time of year.

I can understand there is a need to do tests; whether these particular tests are right or not I do not know but I get the impression that some schools put too much pressure on kids; the results really do not matter to the kids at all but they certainly do matter to the schools as it affects how the schools are judged. The quote above from the BBC article is further evidence to support my theory that some schools are putting too much pressure onto the kids.

I'm aware that some kids have not been attending extracurricular / fun activities lately due to being "shattered" or "tired" due to SATs, or due to being put under pressure by schools to attend additional revision/preparation sessions, while in other cases parents didn't want to sign their kids up for activities until the SATs were over.

Is it the fault of schools who put pressure on kids, or the fault of Government, or some combination of this?

Also, even if SATS were scrapped, something would surely have to replace them, to see what level students are at, and unless schools are not going to be judged at all based on the performance in any tests, then I suspect that any replacement tests would still end up with schools passing on pressure onto kids.

There is a counter argument that kids at the age of 11 should be given reasonable preparation for the demands of secondary schools, and therefore if they didn't do any form of exams it would leave them less well prepared for doing exams in the future, so I am not sure that scrapping all tests for this age group is the argument.

I don't know any detail about the subject but I just get to hear about the effects it has on some children, so if anyone here has direct experience of it, that would be interesting to hear.

 

[purple-Azumas]

I can't say I have too much sympathy for those that found it hard.

My year group were the first to experience these 'new' style of SATs and so arguably there was the same pressure for the school to achieve coupled with the slightly greater uncertainty of what to expect. I can't remember the exams being too hard - the best bit was the spelling test where they'd say something like 'the word is knock - knock' which is probably dubious practice at best!

I very much agree with your sentiment about preparing for secondary school - we went from a couple of tasks a week (an online maths challenge of some sort and then a history/geography/something else task) to a regular pattern of a homework task for maths, English and SPaG every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I think the repetition of that pattern definitely helps, as sometimes lessons in primary are a bit disjointed in where they are in the day and in secondary it's quite fixed. It definitely gets you prepared for the fact you'll get more homework than you're used to in Year 7!

People saying that they are hard has to be a good thing - as with any exam they have to differentiate between children of different abilities, providing questions easily accessible for those at the lower end of ability whilst also stretching those at the top end in terms of ability. Finding it hard shouldn't be seen as a bad thing as you'll be doing so many tests in secondary (not just GCSE/A-Level) that resilience to pick yourself up again is a must.

It also wraps the year off nicely as well - I remember we always used to do the exams in the morning and then got extra playtime and sports in the afternoon as a 'reward'! The rest of Year 6 was just fun (trips and games and just generally quite relaxed) so it's nice to have a positive end to primary.

Schools do enough testing with past papers to know how the kids will perform in advance, so I think they should be better supporting and encouraging them rather than putting needless pressure on them to achieve marks they know they will never be able to.

 

[SuspectUsual]

Is it the fault of schools who put pressure on kids, or the fault of Government, or some combination of this?

And also the parents in some cases

 

[AlterEgo]

I did my Year 6 SATs some 26 years ago and remember them being quite pressurised. Do they still have extension papers?

 

[purple-Azumas]

Do they still have extension papers?

Not any more - just one paper for everyone; they've had to embed those extension questions into the 'regular' paper so for things like reading I think there's a somewhat noticeable difference and may be leading to the outcry.

The grading's changed a bit too - I don't ever remember getting a mark back but you did get a 'scaled score' up to 120 (with 100 being average) and then a 'working above/in line with/below age related expectations' descriptor to match up to the score.

 

[spyinthesky]

I do remember having a conversation with the deputy head during a parents evening at my daughters school and it was all about the school doing well in the SATs. Knowing that my daughter was clever enough but always worried about exams I told them both that she will do her best providing the school has done theirs.

 

[AlterEgo]

Not any more - just one paper for everyone; they've had to embed those extension questions into the 'regular' paper so for things like reading I think there's a somewhat noticeable difference and may be leading to the outcry.

The grading's changed a bit too - I don't ever remember getting a mark back but you did get a 'scaled score' up to 120 (with 100 being average) and then a 'working above/in line with/below age related expectations' descriptor to match up to the score.

Back when I did them you got an attainment level 1-8 with EP being exceptional performance I think. The inclusion of very hard questions in a normal paper is a bit harsh on kids that age - the extension papers were for the annoying precocious kids like me and would have been considered very hard for an average student. Probably wrong to have dishearteningly hard questions in the paper.

 

[Bayum]

This year’s reading assessment was particularly challenging. Much of the reading paper was at a far higher standard than previous exams and the style of questioning was much more oriented on more challenging concepts rather than the mix we’ve seen previously. Ours managed to finish the paper, but schools around us have said many of their reading proficient/greater depth children were unable to complete the paper.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 May 2023 ==

Not any more - just one paper for everyone; they've had to embed those extension questions into the 'regular' paper so for things like reading I think there's a somewhat noticeable difference and may be leading to the outcry.

It’s been this way for years. The difference this year is the number of questions that were usually find at the end of papers.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 May 2023 ==

I did my Year 6 SATs some 26 years ago and remember them being quite pressurised. Do they still have extension papers?

L6 went a while ago.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 May 2023 ==

People saying that they are hard has to be a good thing - as with any exam they have to differentiate between children of different abilities, providing questions easily accessible for those at the lower end of ability whilst also stretching those at the top end in terms of ability. Finding it hard shouldn't be seen as a bad thing as you'll be doing so many tests in secondary (not just GCSE/A-Level) that resilience to pick yourself up again is a must.

That’s the point of a scaled score. The children that do well will achieve a higher scaled score than someone else. The difference this year was the sheer number of challenging questions compared to previous.

 

[Snow1964]

The difference in modern times is schools let students and parents know test dates in advance. Allows people to stress and worry about it.

When I did them at Junior school (about 1975), they would be sprung on you, came in from normal playtime break, and would be told you were doing them. I think they might not have been National, but were county wide or regional as the marks went to the secondary schools (which had only few years before changed to comprehensives), and formed basis of which level of classes you went in.

I don't see a problem if there are some harder bits, because if loads sail through the test, it's not going to separate the talented students and indicate they need a higher teaching level to keep them stretched. Any test that just lets them coast because they are seen at same level (because all got same high score) is not worth doing.

 

[johntea]

I think they just need to make it crystal clear to the kids…it doesn’t matter if you ‘fail’

Tests are still a thing in some careers, I work in IT and they’re common if I want to take a training course and/or exam but if I fail I don’t lose my job the second the failed screen appears!

GCSE/A Level/Degrees are somewhat important on getting your first step on the career ladder but after that experience of actually doing the job becomes far more important, apprenticeships are a great in between

 

[Bayum]

I don't see a problem if there are some harder bits, because if loads sail through the test, it's not going to separate the talented students and indicate they need a higher teaching level to keep them stretched. Any test that just lets them coast because they are seen at same level (because all got same high score) is not worth doing.

These days, SATS are used less and less for this, though, and most secondary schools will do their own form of assessments on transition days/entry to school in Y7. As far as I’m concerned, they are a monitoring point and nothing else. Fisher Family Trust and whoever else can use them to give ‘projected scores’ at GCSE all they want but a student will either achieve, over or underachieve, regardless of their projected score.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 14 May 2023 ==

From the TES:


This week, Year 6 pupils in England sat down to take their hour-long key stage 2 reading test - the third paper of six during the 2023 Sats week.

The reading paper has caused huge controversy this year among primary teachers and leaders (and pupils) - not because of the content but because of the length of the texts and the difficulty of the questions.

In the reading booklet, children were asked to read a total of 2,106 words split into three separate texts. This is one of the longest reading booklets ever used in the KS2 tests - and almost at the limit of the 2,300 words for the texts that is set as the maximum number.

Furthermore, the Department for Education’s guidelines say that a Sats pupil is expected to be able to read a minimum of 90 words per minute.

This means reading the booklet alone would take 23 minutes and 30 seconds, leaving just 36 minutes and 30 seconds to answer the test questions.

But this isn’t the only reading that pupils are expected to do in the hour-long test.

In the section of the test book that poses the questions to pupils, there are many more words to be read - 1,337 in fact.

That will take our 90-words-a-minute reader another 14 minutes and 51 seconds to read - but we will round that up to 15 minutes to give them time to turn the pages.

So there are now just 21 and a half minutes to answer 38 questions - meaning you have to give an answer every 34 seconds (this includes the time it will take to go back and re-read a passage to get their answer).

What’s more, with a maximum of 50 marks in total to be had in the paper from these questions, it means you are trying to “score” a mark every 25 seconds.

Graph


Break it down like this, and throw in the reports that the texts chosen were particularly unengaging, and it’s no wonder so many teachers reported pupils feeling overwhelmed, upset and stressed with the paper.

It’s made all the more controversial when you consider that the 2022 reading paper for Sats was so different. That contained just 1,564 words in the reading booklet, meaning pupils reading at 90 words per minute could finish it in just over 17 minutes - a full 6.5 minutes quicker than this year.

As the answer booklet contained 1,130 words - meaning it could be finished in 12 and a half minutes - it meant overall the paper contained under 30 minutes of reading, giving pupils a whole eight and a half minutes more for their answers.

As a result, instead of half a minute per mark, students in 2022 had a luxurious 61 seconds.

Any child who reads at a speed under 90 words a minute is given 25 per cent more time to complete the test. This means that whether they read 89 words a minute or 60, all students receive the 25 per cent increase.

In fact, though, the time given to pupils for Sats reading varies massively each year, with the length of texts chosen ranging from just 1,526 in 2018 to 2,135 in 2019, the last year before the pandemic.

Given the huge impact the pandemic will have had on this year’s cohort of pupils, it is no wonder so many people have raised concerns about the difficulty of the paper.

When Tes asked the DfE about the length of the reading paper, it said that the KS2 assessments were “designed to be challenging in order to measure attainment across the ability range, including stretching the most able children”.

With regards to the challenge of the reading test in 2023 compared to 2022, the DfE explained that “test development takes many years, with questions rigorously trialled with Year 6 pupils and reviewed by education and inclusion experts to ensure appropriateness”

 

[greatkingrat]

The problem with including questions for a range of different abilities on one paper, is that the less able children can get bogged down on the difficult questions, and end up leaving questions they could have answered blank because they ran out of time.

 

[dangie]

And also the parents in some cases

I think parents should remember that education begins at home. My children and my grandchildren could read & write to a reasonable standard before starting primary school. This was due to one reason. We took the time to teach them. We encouraged them through playing games. We read to them. Many parents think education is the sole responsibility of the school.

Parents must be a bugbear of teachers lives.

 

[johntea]

Well if you want a go yourself the paper (and mark scheme) has now been published online

National curriculum assessments: past test materials

Assessment materials used for the phonics screening check, key stage 1 and key stage 2 national curriculum tests in the past 3 years, including test papers.

www.gov.uk

The BBC reckon the following questions are where the complaints came from

Question 17
Look at Harriet's answer beginning It's actually very appropriate...
Find and copy one word that is closest in meaning to "eat".

Question 8
She wriggled back inside the tent...
What does this tell you about how Priya got inside the tent? Tick one.

Question 13
Look at the first two paragraphs.
In which American state is the Congress Avenue Bridge found?

As someone who did English at A Level and nearly 4 times the age of the intended audience I can't say I found it too tricky but an hour to read and have to refer back to specific parts of the reading material to answer 38 questions seems quite challenging, 90 minutes or even 2 hours would perhaps have been more suitable

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-65624697 (gives the answers away in the article if you're playing along)

The details of last week's Year 6 Sats reading paper have been published, after some teachers and parents said it was so tough it left children in tears.
One question asked 10 and 11-year-olds to find a similar word to "eat" in a passage that contained both "consume" and "feeding".
Even staff "had to really think" about the answers, the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) said.
The Department for Education (DfE) said the Sats were "rigorously trialled".
BBC News was given the paper on Wednesday, so was able to look over the questions before their publication.
Concerns have been raised about its length and complexity, with some parents and teachers reporting that children were unable to finish it.
The paper has fuelled a debate among teachers and parents about the purpose of Sats.

 

[westv]

Obviously I can't know what I would have thought when I was younger (can only assume I would have been fine) but now, I thought the questions were dead easy. I am really surprised the teachers claimed they struggled too.
I do recall being told at 11 that I had a "reading age" of 16.

 

[90019]

Question 17

Look at Harriet's answer beginning It's actually very appropriate...

Find and copy one word that is closest in meaning to "eat".

Spoiler

Relevant extract: It's actually very appropriate that you call it a "hotspot". The gaps underneath the bridge are a perfect place for mother bats to raise their young. Baby bats are born hairless and have only a few months to develop before travelling south in autumn. They need somewhere warm and safe and the gaps under the bridge are just the right width to trap warmth nicely. These bat pups need to spend their energy on growth, not on keeping themselves warm.
Texas in general is a paradise for bats because of all its tasty insects. A mother bat will go out hunting every evening and consume about two-thirds of her body weight in insects every single night to meet her energy need. The feeding frenzy can last all night.

Answer: The teacher was concerned that the answer was "consume" but many children would have written "feeding". According to the mark scheme, both answers were acceptable.

If both answers are acceptable, what's the issue?

Question 13

Look at the first two paragraphs.

In which American state is the Congress Avenue Bridge found?

Spoiler

Relevant extract: By day the Congress Avenue Bridge in the city of Austin could hardly look more normal: a grey, dreary city-centre road bridge. By night, it plays host to one of the most amazing shows nature has to offer. The underside of the bridge is home to more than a million bats, and every evening in summer they all come swarming out at once, rising up into the city sky like a tornado before spreading out in all directions like plumes of smoke. Standing on the bridge, you might even feel the wind from their wings as they pass by.
Austin is the capital city of the state of Texas in the USA, but it is also the bat capital of North America. The bats under the bridge attract thousands of visitors every year, and every August lovers celebrate Bat Fest on the bridge in their honour.

Answer: The answer is Texas but the teacher told us it was likely children would not be familiar enough with American geography to know that Austin is not a state.

Which is irrelevant - they don't need to know American geography, they just have to read the two paragraphs where it tells you that Austin is a city and Texas is the state.

The very first sentence of the extract is this:

By day the Congress Avenue Bridge in the city of Austin could hardly look more normal: a grey, dreary city-centre road bridge.

If they're reading that and then putting the answer as Austin being the state, there's clearly an issue with reading comprehension and trying to pass it off as the kids not knowing American geography is a feeble attempt at an excuse.

 

[gg1]

Obviously I can't know what I would have thought when I was younger (can only assume I would have been fine) but now, I thought the questions were dead easy. I am really surprised the teachers claimed they struggled too.
I do recall being told at 11 that I had a "reading age" of 16.

Hard to be sure how I'd have coped with them at that age but they don't strike me as excessively difficult for an 11 year old either, and that's speaking as someone who only managed to pass GCSE English on my 3rd attempt.

The problem with including questions for a range of different abilities on one paper, is that the less able children can get bogged down on the difficult questions, and end up leaving questions they could have answered blank because they ran out of time.

Are children no longer advised to move on the next questions in those circumstances and return to the harder question later? I definitely remember being told that repeatedly at school.

 

[Cross City]

If they're reading that and then putting the answer as Austin being the state, there's clearly an issue with reading comprehension and trying to pass it off as the kids not knowing American geography is a feeble attempt at an excuse.

Expecting a 10 year old to know what a US state is is unreasonable IMO. I get that it says it in the text but comprehending how the political geography of the USA works is not something they're liable to understand when states don't exist in this country.

Nearly 40 questions in an hour is also unfair.

 

[3141]

Expecting a 10 year old to know what a US state is is unreasonable IMO. I get that it says it in the text but comprehending how the political geography of the USA works is not something they're liable to understand when states don't exist in this country.

Nearly 40 questions in an hour is also unfair.

Even if the 10-year-old doesn't know anything about American states, there's sentence in the text that states clearly what the reader needs to know to answer the question.

These three controversial questions are probably ones that aim to differentiate between pupils. Part of the practising of SATS, which some schools do ad nauseam, should include the advice to do what you can first and come back later to what you couldn't.

Forty questions in an hour isn't necessarily unfair - it depends on the difficulty of the questions and how many words you have to write in answer to them. That's an issue which should have been identified when the SATS papers were being developed and tested. I don't know if they were given enough development, or not.

I'm inclined to think that the schools which have complained (a) are too concerned about their own reputations in the SATS; (b) have placed too much emphasis on SATS results, causing pupils to worry unduly. Maybe they've focussed so much on practice papers that anything in the real paper that's new and different causes problems; if they'd paid more attention to reading and comprehension skills the pupils might have coped better. In addition, they may have a high proportion of neurotic parents.

 

[90019]

Expecting a 10 year old to know what a US state is is unreasonable IMO. I get that it says it in the text but comprehending how the political geography of the USA works is not something they're liable to understand when states don't exist in this country.

But they don't need to know, that's the point - It tells them twice in the text that Austin is a city and then states clearly that Texas is the state.
You don't need to understand political geography to be able to read through and give the answer that's written in the text.

 

[SuspectUsual]

I was interested to read the article, and if these are the "problem" questions (I assume they are, and that they've been highlighted as such by teachers) then I'm far from convinced there really is an issue, other than the length of the articles and the timing, which does seem a bit tight.

As an aside, I spoke to my dad about this to get his perspective as an ex-teacher and he broadly agreed with me. He did tell me, though, that I apparently "taught myself to read". I had no idea, and to be honest I'm not sure how I could've but him and my mum were certain of it

 

[gswindale]

Expecting a 10 year old to know what a US state is is unreasonable IMO. I get that it says it in the text but comprehending how the political geography of the USA works is not something they're liable to understand when states don't exist in this country.

Nearly 40 questions in an hour is also unfair.

How do you need to know what a US State is?

By day the Congress Avenue Bridge in the city of Austin...Austin is the capital city of the state of Texas in the USA

All you need to be able to do is to read and answer the question, which is quite obvious from reading those two sentences?

It's been a while since I was 10, but I'm reasonably certain I'd have been able to follow that through, even if I couldn't spell "neighbours" correctly in quiz/exam type conditions...

 

[3141]

As an aside, I spoke to my dad about this to get his perspective as an ex-teacher and he broadly agreed with me. He did tell me, though, that I apparently "taught myself to read". I had no idea, and to be honest I'm not sure how I could've but him and my mum were certain of it

My wife also learnt to read before she went to school, aged 5 back in those days. She's not sure now how she did it: probably a combination of being read to, sitting beside the person reading to her (mostly her grandfather), asking questions, and trying it for herself.

 

[ChrisC]

Are children no longer advised to move on the next questions in those circumstances and return to the harder question later? I definitely remember being told that repeatedly at school.

I would hope that is still the case. I certainly always did when my class were doing SATs and that was the Year 2 SATs. I repeatedly told them not to sit there for ages worrying about a difficult question but leave it and go on to the next one.

 

[75A]

My wife also learnt to read before she went to school, aged 5 back in those days. She's not sure now how she did it: probably a combination of being read to, sitting beside the person reading to her (mostly her grandfather), asking questions, and trying it for herself.

I'm told I was reading before I started school in 1963, had a full time Mother to help.

 

[Bayum]

As stated previously, some of the questions have answers which could be more than one; usually, the mark schemes are so restrictive in their awarding of answers that when faced with a number of possible answers, it becomes disheartening for students.

The sheer amount of text and content given is difficult to work with - this is only the 2nd test with such a large number of words. Broken down, it gives you:
Text 1: 627. Marks: 14
Text 2: 808: Marks: 20 (majority of marks from the longest text)
Text 3: 611. Marks: 16
The text choices weren’t particularly appropriate - extract 3 is more akin to a KS3 cohort text for example.
Then, the large number of written, I.e. ‘explain why/find and copy’ combined with the amount of text to read within the reading leaflet and the questions themselves puts you at a disadvantage. A child who can’t write at speed may only get 25% extra time which might not be enough. Ditto for those reading at less than 90 words a minute.

 

[AlterEgo]

Those aren’t hard questions. I was a precocious child but I think most kids at age 10-11 should be able to read and understand English to that standard.

The time limit does seem onerous and stressful for that age group though.

 

[Bayum]

But they don't need to know, that's the point - It tells them twice in the text that Austin is a city and then states clearly that Texas is the state.
You don't need to understand political geography to be able to read through and give the answer that's written in the text.

In a test situation, at 10/11, might you not stumble when you’ve struggled with the text and questions in the first section and then see an answer? As an adult, you say that’s easy but I bet if you were put into a similar situation with questions on a text that you have no context to you would struggle.

 

[Ediswan]

I do recall being told at 11 that I had a "reading age" of 16.

Similar here. But the test was very basic. You had to read aloud a series of increasingly difficult words until you got too many (small number) wrong. It did not check whether you knew the meaning of any of those words.

I'm told I was reading before I started school in 1963, had a full time Mother to help.

Having a full time mother who was also a primary school teacher definitely helped me.

 

[Lewisham2221]

I might be totally missing the point, but I thought the whole idea of an exam was that some pupils would find the questions harder than others, thus resulting in different grades? I can't quite see the point in am exam that is easy enough for everybody to get the majority of answers correct.

If a child is coming out of an exam in tears I'd suggest that the school and/or parents are failing the child by either a: putting too much pressure on them; or b: providing substandard education; or both.

Whilst SATs and GCSEs were both pressed on us as being important (20-25 years ago), I certainly don't remember either myself nor any other pupils getting stressed to the point of missing out on socialising, skipping extra curricular activities, sleepless nights or crying after exams.