Scratch

Yeah... they scrapped the Science paper...    I'll find a back copy, and make my Y6 brother do that one instead xD I had to...[Y8tantrum] IT'S NOHT FAIHR! [/Y8tantrum]

Mind you, they have to do an extra year of school... on top of the extra one that Y8s and Y7s have to do... [Y8tantrum] BAWWWWWWWWWWWW :'( [/Y8tantrum]

JSO wrote:

Boycot? 

He means if the school has cancelled them. Mine has: I was sad about losing my maths, because I think I was going to get a high level 5, but I was worried about my English.

Eh, I did them all and am in Year 10 now. It's all the "new" GCSE examinations and stuff which confuse me, as I don't understand the necessity to change them.

My council hasn't scrapped them and I don't want them to.

benjamin2 wrote:

JSO wrote:

Boycot? 

He means if the school has cancelled them. Mine has: I was sad about losing my maths, because I think I was going to get a high level 5, but I was worried about my English.

Why are some UK schools boycotting the SAT's?

Paddle2See wrote:

benjamin2 wrote:

JSO wrote:

Boycot? 

He means if the school has cancelled them. Mine has: I was sad about losing my maths, because I think I was going to get a high level 5, but I was worried about my English.

Why are some UK schools boycotting the SAT's?

My guess: money. 

jukyter wrote:

Paddle2See wrote:

benjamin2 wrote:

He means if the school has cancelled them. Mine has: I was sad about losing my maths, because I think I was going to get a high level 5, but I was worried about my English.

Why are some UK schools boycotting the SAT's?

My guess: money. 

Your guessed wrong.

A lot of teachers consider that the SATS are a waste of time, since a good teacher can grade the class based on their knowledge of the class and their abilites and doesn't need a test to be able to give the child a level.

If this is the case, the SATS serve only to interupt actual teaching time and freak out the children.  You lose a week of lessons for the tests themselves, and the weeks leading up to them become a frenzy of revision rather than learning new things.  That's 4 weeks taken out of the curriculum.

So the UK's biggest teaching union, the NUT, asked its members to boycott the SATS, that is, to refuse to administer them. 

(For those asking - Year 6 = 10-11 year olds, and is the last year of primary school before the kids go to high school)

Wolfie1996 wrote:

They scrapped the Science paper because Science "isn't an important part of a child's education", when in my opinion, it is just as important as English and Maths...

That is definitely not true - science is still a very large part of the curriculum.  However, assessing it via SATS is wholly unnecessary, since it can be assessed by the teacher during actual science lessons, with the children actually planning, carrying out and evaluating experiments rather than just answering questions about them.

Eliminating the science SAT means two less tests to worry about - which can only be a good thing since no 10 year old should have to worry about taking a test morning AND afternoon.

Last edited by Mayhem (2010-05-08 08:43:54)

Looks like we have some confusion. In the US, the SAT is a test usually taken by juniors and seniors in high school (generally 16 to 18 years old). Our scores have a big effect on which colleges we can go to.

In the UK, the SATS seem completely different, so I did some research. (Correct me on anything I'm wrong about.)

The UK's "year 6" seems about equivalent to the US's 5th grade- 10 and 11 year olds. In the UK, SATS stands for Standard Assessment Tests. It is taken in year 2, 6, and 9 (that's 1st, 5th, and 8th grade to Americans) and  is used to measure the student's progress compared to other students born in his or her month. Read here to find out more. So why are schools boycotting the test? It looks like they're actually boycotting Ofsted inspections which are about standards- something Americans are definitely familiar with. Read more about the boycott here.

Last edited by scmb1 (2010-05-08 11:20:09)

So, the reading test is complete.
Next up - Short writing task (20 mins) then spelling in one sitting.
Followed by the Long writing task (45 mins).

Good Luck!

And don't forget DEAD COPS PFC

Description - Adverbs, Adjectives, emotive verbs, use all 5 senses, metaphor, simile.
Effect - Who is the intended audience?  How do you want them to feel?
Actions - Exciting actions
Dialogue - include some character speech
Complex Sentences - connectives, subclauses.
Organisation - Plan an opening paragraph, some intermediates and a concluding paragraph.
Punctuation - Punctuate every line.  use at least a couple of ! and ?, use commas in lists and as pauses.
Sentence order - Occasionally swap it around - Down the road, the man walked.
Paragraphs - A new scene, a new location, a new speaker, a new subject = a new paragraph.
Feelings - Give your characters feelings, but show don't tell.  Generate emotion in the reader.
Completion - you will lose several marks if you have not given yourself enough time to finish the work properly.

Day 3!

The Non-Calculator Maths Paper and the Mental Maths Paper.

Don't forget - in the main paper, don't leave any questions unanswered.  A blank space can never gain a mark, but a guess sometimes can.