[Flyboy]

Originally Posted by Ed2020

You're probably right, although I doubt it's the majority of them or even a significant minority. And if the pupils don't pass the exams does this necessarily reflect badly on the teachers or the school (or anyone else for that matter)?

I would suggest that it is more than a significant minority.

I don't think anything should replace them. The education system seemed to manage okay before Sats were introduced and I don't think any parent who takes an interest in their child's education needs exam results to judge a school's performance. Nor do I think exam results are a good benchmark for a school's performance for anyone other than statisticians.

Just to clarify - my comment about parents who take an interest not needing exam results to judge a school's performance was not intended as a dig (in case it came across as one)! You obviously do take an interest and an active role in your children's education. Surely you'd know if their school wasn't performing up to standard?

The results of these test are not just for parents who have children at a school, but for prospective parents. How would they judge the performance of a school? Parents who already have children at a school must be allow3d to know the overall performance at a school so that they can take action of they find that the school is failing. Either by working with the school to help raise the standards, or to withdraw the children to a better school, for which they will need to know how well that school is doing.

I didn't say they left because they weren't coping. They left because teaching has been replaced by endless exam-prep. Sats start at the end of infant school for crying out loud. Infants shouldn't be sitting exams of any kind - it's just wrong. And they have another 10+ years at least of exam preparation ahead of them.

But, as I intimated, many teachers do not find these tests any more stretching than other parts of their work. In fact, since SATs were introduced, almost twenty years ago, there have been many changes in classroom management, not least with the introduction, with increasing numbers, of classroom assistants, in the form of TAs, LSAs and SSAs. Time off for preparation, for example, with many other things that have made teachers lives more manageable. There are many things in today's schools which impact heavily on the work load of teachers, reducing their ability to teach effectively and tests are part of that, but unless they are replaced with something that will reliably provide the same information, they are here to stay.

There are not any exams at key stage one. SATs are teacher based assessments, not tests.