Let Our Kids be Kids - 3 May 2016: Primary School Kids to strike against SATS

[Judelo]

Which is why I think some unified action by parents ans teachers together which leaves the kids out of it is the best way forward.

Or unified with all three

 

[Judelo]

Since the main social function of schools is to provide state-funded childcare so adults can work

Had never thought of it like that; only the brain/character killing/washing and the whole training to be a cog in the machine etc.

 

[Judelo]

I don't have kids but best wishes to everyone today

 

[spirals]

Boy child is doing key stage 2 sats, he was in a terrible state about them over the weekend, he even cried If he was with us full time he wouldn't be doing them! (I don't think people whose kids sit them are monsters or owt just to make it clear!) We did a couple of practise papers with him and they were impossibly hard. Mr s had to goggle the answers and he's verging on genius levels of smart

 

[redchris]

Boy child is doing key stage 2 sats, he was in a terrible state about them over the weekend, he even cried If he was with us full time he wouldn't be doing them! (I don't think people whose kids sit them are monsters or owt just to make it clear!) We did a couple of practise papers with them and they were impossibly hard. Mr s had to goggle the answers and he's verging on genius levels of smart

The tests are incredibly difficult. The majority of adults would fail to score 100% in them. I listened to some Tory chump on r4 this morning agreeing with this and making the point that the increased difficulty in curriculum is an effort to raise standards and catch up with other countries who are achieving higher educational grades than the UK. Listening to the CEO of our Shanghai office describe the regime that his children suffer in order to achieve, I'll happily let my 6yo achieve lower grades than his Chinese counterparts. I always considered myself a traditionalist when it came to education and do believe that learning grammar is important and a key reason why us Brits always struggle to learn foreign languages, but as with everything in life is all about finding the right balance. The government's obsession with exam testing is ludicrous but exactly the sort of pigheadedness I would expect from them.

 

[trashpony]

Boy child is doing key stage 2 sats, he was in a terrible state about them over the weekend, he even cried If he was with us full time he wouldn't be doing them! (I don't think people whose kids sit them are monsters or owt just to make it clear!) We did a couple of practise papers with him and they were impossibly hard. Mr s had to goggle the answers and he's verging on genius levels of smart

How do you get out of your kids taking them if they're at state school?

We've done some maths and now we're doing English. It's much faster 1-2-1!

 

[eoin_k]

...
The idea of using fake words is that they are going to be words that the child won't recognise. If you want to find out if a 6yo knows what sound igh represents, you can do that by asking them to read "kighl" because asking them to read "night" might just tell you they recognise the word night.

This seems to point to the limitations of using phonics to teach a language that isn't particularly phonetic.

There is a reasonable chance that at least one of my kids will be dyslexic, like their mum and a few other people in her family. Now, if they can keep up with spelling real words that you would expect of a child of their age, why set them the frankly pointless challenge of spelling made up ones? Different people learn to spell differently: most people find the mechanics of spelling out new words relatively easy while others rely more on visual memory and developing a wide vocabulary.

Obviously, a positive reason for testing could be that it provides a chance to identify who might be struggling because of conditions such as dyslexia and so make a positive intervention, but nobody seems inclined to diagnose dyslexia at this age, as a lot of the symptoms are a normal part of child development.

Maybe a test with made up words could be a useful diagnostic tool and it might even make sense to offer it more widely, like the tests for colour blindness in a school medical. But including it in SATs is as arbitrary as trying to quantify how colour blind some kids are as part of such a general assessment - never mind the coping strategy they might have developed to deal with a poly-chromatic world.

I'm not trying to suggest that phonics doesn't help a lot of kids to learn to read and write, but that is all it does. If anything needs to be tested (i.e. for formative purposes), it should be how well the child can use actual words rather than this Kafkaesque nonsense.

 

[Treacle Toes]

.

 

[Thora]

The phonics check isn't part of SATS, it happens in year 1.

 

[eoin_k]

Fair enough

 

[trashpony]

Well, the school head came over to me at the gate this morning, thanked me for my letter and my support for teachers. She is furious at the government ignoring head teachers' recommendations and that they blame schools for not making the SATs fun and causing children to feel stressed.

As predicted, Elliot was absolutely crowing at having had the day off on the way to school

 

[Sweet FA]

Fair enough

When they take the test doesn't negate the content of your post; many, many teachers would agree with you.

 

[eoin_k]

When they take the test doesn't negate the content of your post; many, many teachers would agree with you.

Thanks for the sentiment, but it does undermines the bit of my point about it being included in SATs. I was also trying to make placatory noises to Thora because I realised that some of the bile in my previous post could have come across as directed at her, which wasn't my intention, rather than at the direction that the education system is headed, on which I imagine we might agree on the whole.

 

[stuff_it]

Hence the bizarre situation of walking into a Y1/2 class to see children being 'taught' words that don't exist... Christ, saying to a Y4/5 yo ,'is 'glerg' a real word?' 'Erm in my limited experience of all the words there are, can I say possibly?'

Youse is well glerg, dan.

Heads must decide how to record ‘protest’ pupil absences on May 3

Citizenship field trip, obvs.

 

[Mr.Bishie]

Brighton parents - City’s school term proposals aim to help families | Brighton & Hove City Council

Probably deserves it's own thread Nationwide tbf, as it's on no way related to the OP @self