For several days, debate has raged over the complexity of last week’s Year 6 Sats reading paper. Some of the children who took it were reportedly in tears afterwards, while the government said that tests are “designed to be challenging”.
Many parents and teachers complained that it was simply too difficult for pupils to complete in the required hour, with one head teacher saying it had left her school’s “capable” readers “broken”.
The test paper, which the Department for Education insists was “rigorously trialled”, has now been published.
So how tough is it exactly?
The marking scheme, which has also been published, reveals that 36 of the 38 questions were designed to test three specific reading skills. Pupils who could demonstrate them had the chance to earn a total possible score of 50, but analysis suggests high scores were only possible for those who showed a fourth unspecified ability.
Presumably, 11-year-old children are exposed to and practice on previous tests but how do forum members, without the exposure and practice, find the tests - “easy” or “difficult” …
I took the test and these are my answers. For a 11 y.o. it is undoubtedly challenging since it requires excellent reading skills at an early age which seems to be the biggest challenge given that too many children don’t read that much these days and were not routinely read aloud to when younger either.
Would be insightful to compare the standard with that of the tests in mathematical reasoning and arithmetic. Are they less challenging?
1
tasty insects and the bridge
pulling out hair and carry a disease
a good half mile from home
Texas
2
colony
at risk
move on
definite
3
her heart beating fast
took a deep breath, trying to calm down
usually just a couple of cars a day
she could see the whole valley, blue and black and silver in the moonlight
I don’t think the individual questions are difficult but, as the article points out, the biggest challenge would be the short amount of time pupils have to read and assimilate the text and answer all the questions.
Being able to quickly answer the examples given in the article, where the journalist has provided the relevant text paragraph, doesn’t really compare with having to read the full text of the test paper to get the gist of each of the three stories, then look through the text again to pick out the relevant bits of text to answer the questions on each story.
I downloaded the full text and all 36 questions -
None of the questions look difficult but some look as if they require a bit more time to refer back to the text before answering than others, so I couldn’t say how easy it would be to read and answer all questions in the allotted time without actually trying to do it - even then, I couldn’t recreate the scenario of a maybe nervous 11 year old trying to do it for an important exam.
Stuff like this always seems easier when you are not under real exam conditions.
I think to see what skill level children have the questions can’t be so easy everyone gets them right, or so hard no one does?
Some will get all the answers wrong, some all of them right, and most on a scale somewhere in between
I thought the questions were reasonable for 11 year olds some a bit tricky but not impossible
Exam panic, nerves etc will account for some wrong answers but I can’t think of a better way of seeing the childrens progress and how well the school is teaching them
SAT results are also a useful tool when placing children into sets on their arrival at secondary school in September - not the only information used of course but useful all the same. Also, as pupils progress through secondary they will be tested in-house at the end of each academic year in some subjects to assess their progress towards their GCSEs in Year 11 - along with KS3 SAT in Year 9. So it’s all good practice!
So four reading skills? My mother called the reading, writing, and arithmetic. That was three. It was the same for me in primary school. So, what four are they now?
I didn’t answer the Question because I did not sit down and read all three stories and answer all 36 Questions within a timed period of 1 hour, as the schoolchildren had to do.
I had already read the newspaper article, which gave you the answers to some of the Questions by quoting some of the Questions and the relevant bits of the text from the Stories, before I even looked for the Full Test Paper, so it would have been pointless for me to try doing the Full Test in the allotted time, after I had prior knowledge of some of the Questions. That would be cheating!
