The journey through primary school is littered with milestones. Whether it be the nativity plays, sports days or residential trips, there are many key moments through the years.
Key stage 2 Sats assessments are another such milestone - although perhaps more so for leaders and teachers.
After all, Sats always come with an extra sense of importance because they are testing the children we have worked with for so many years - and outcomes are used to mark pupil progress and inform school rankings.
This year’s Year 6 children did not complete KS1 Sats due to the Covid-19 pandemic, so that comparison will not exist.
Even so, testing children creates stress for teachers and leaders. This is something that, while healthy in moderation, must not become overwhelming as these are not conditions in which anyone thrives.
Keeping everything normal
So, what can be done about it?
In our trust, one key thing we do is try to make sure the experience of Sats for both children in Year 6 and the staff that work with them is as closely aligned to the rest of the year groups as possible.
Indeed, Sats are meant to be an assessment of all of the key stage content and so everyone in the school has played a part in getting the children to the best possible place - not just Year 6 staff.
To do this, the team across the trust and in the schools has developed a curriculum that gives the children insights, experience, skills and knowledge to prepare them for their journey through education - ensuring they are “secondary ready” in every subject, not just maths and English.
This is important for the teachers in Year 6 because we hope it means they recognise that rather than being fixated on Sats, we want them to deliver a broad curriculum as part of our trust’s “Quality Education” mantra.
Broadening knowledge
In doing so we believe there are, hopefully, benefits for the Sats, too, by exposing children to a wider range of topics, people and events. This can then help them in their writing or reading comprehension by giving them a wider background knowledge, which may be useful in the tests.
Furthermore, while we teach more maths and English than other curriculum subjects in Year 6 - as in all year groups - we work hard to ensure teachers understand this focus is not about the outcomes for Sats, but about supporting pupils to be ready for their secondary education.
After all, while we know Sats can measure this (on the day the tests are taken), we want children in the trust to be confident and secure in their knowledge and understanding so they can continue to be great learners once they have moved on.
To support this, our leaders work with Year 6 teams to analyse a range of data to pinpoint specific areas that are the building blocks for future learning - place value and operations in math or sentence structure in writing, for example.
Focus on what matters, not the tests
Colleagues like this approach as rather than having to feel like they have to cover everything in the run-up to Sats in a mad rush, they are focusing on what the child actually needs to learn for the next stage of their education journey - and ensure they have the necessary knowledge for their Sats organically.
Tying these ideas together to reduce the feeling of stress over Sats, we have also moved away from data targets for all staff, including our leaders.
Appraisals for staff often contain what I consider arbitrary targets for staff to achieve a certain percentage of children achieving a certain score.
To me, this was an unnecessarily stressful approach and unfair on teachers and so, since 2021, we have stopped appraising teachers and leaders against Sats (and other assessments) - demonstrating that we truly do believe in a far more holistic approach to children’s education than a one-off test score.
Overall, we must remember summative assessments, like Sats, are the ends and not the means.
The most important thing schools can do is ensure Sats do not loom up like a mountain at the end of primary school, full of foreboding and menace, but are simply another milestone on a child’s education journey.
Mark Chatley is trust leader at Coppice Primary Partnership in Kent
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