Dear Primary School Teachers

This year, I've been working hard.
I get up, I walk the dog, I get ready for work, I go to work, I work from 7.15am until 4pm with few breaks, head home, feed, bath and bed our little one, and then do more work.
I feel broken. Physically and mentally broken.

This isn't the purpose of my blog post.


This year, as part of my new role, I've been a part of more meetings. I was told in one of them that 'SATs are a formal examination process, not sat in rows in a hall, but definitely in exam conditions'.
Good, I thought.
I met a primary colleague at the same meeting who told me that they'd expect, in a standard class in one of our typical feeder primaries, two-thirds of their students to be able to add and subtract mixed numbers competently at the end of year six (having taught them 'tricks', as he put it).
Bad, I thought.

I've done a lot of work with our SOL this year, and my year 7 class is a good test of how well it will work. They all scored around 100 as their scaled score, which I understand to mean that they've succeeded on the year 6 curriculum set out by the DFE. For these students, that means we start year 7 building on this 'secure' knowledge.

They've performed well in class, on their low stakes quizzes and on their delayed homework. But on their first 'proper' assessment, they've done better on the things taught in class than the things they supposedly succeeded with last year.

3 years ago I taught a year 11 class which had a girl called KC. I asked how she was working at a grade E after getting a 5 in her SATs - "my teacher gave me the answers".
Nonsense, I thought.
"No, she didn't", I said. Her friend chimed in - "No, sir. She did. She gave me the answers too. All of us."
Oh no, I thought.

SATs are a formal assessment? That certainly doesn't sound like it.
Taught tricks to be able to do things? That's hardly building understanding or being helpful for assimilating information.

I spoke to my year 7 class today. I talked about KC and I talked about yesterday's assessment and how this was how assessments are to be done - in silence, without help. A test of their independent understanding. I asked them if their SATs experience was similar to the assessment yesterday, and only 5 said yes. I rephrased my question - "Put your hand up if you had an adult help you in your maths SATs at the end of last year". 24 out of 24.
Oh no, I thought.

I understand that primary schools need to have as many students pass as possible. I understand that this is a high stakes environment, but so is secondary school.

I don't care about our school targets. Students achieve what they achieve. I care about our students.

Students are set targets for the end of year 11 and their progress mapped towards this from day one - using their prior attainment. If students have inflated prior attainment and this is used to map progress, these students are not, and likely never will be, on the trajectory that they need to be on from day one and all we'll do is tell them that they're underachieving for five years.

As a student of Craig Barton said, "It's hard to have a growth mindset if I keep doing shit in tests, Sir."

For the sake of our young people, their motivation, their mental health and their understanding, stop helping students in their SATs.
Allow them to achieve at their level, so that the expectation of them isn't too high when they leave your school for the last time and they have 5 years of progress, rather than underachievement.

It's unfair and our young people deserve better.