They say that the purpose of SATS is to guage how well the school is doing, not the child.
However, just because a school gets poor SATS results does not mean that it is not a good school with good, hard working staff.
Schools can only do so much with the pupils they have at the school.
I.e. if the school has a lot of special needs or pupils for whom English is not their first language then they are not going to get the same results in Maths, English and Science as other schools.
Just because the SATS results are poorer does not mean that the children and staff have not tried their best.
More notice should be taken of the value added score which takes into account the level the child was at when they started to the level they were at in their final year.
In year 2, children often don't know they're being tested. They just think their doing some special work with the teacher. These are marked in school by the teacher and are not done under exam conditions.
In year 6 it's a different story. A lot of pressure is put on the child and there is a lot of information to remember. Children need to be fluent readers too as they need to read the booklet before answering the questions and they only get so long in which to do so. If they are not fluent readers they don't stand much chance.
These are marked externally and are done under exam conditions.
What happened with year 6 SATS last year was a disgrace. Many schools papers were lost by external markers and many schools never got their papers back so never knew how the children had done.
All that work and they never got the results.
