Outcomes

July 2016

Dear Parents

We are writing to you following the publishing of the Key Stage 2 SATs results.

As many of you will be aware this year our year 6 children have taken the new SATs, which are designed to test a four year curriculum. However, that new curriculum was only introduced two years ago and has presented considerable challenges in that much of the content has had to be interpreted by individual schools without any guidance from government apart from end of year expectations. The government has set an expected standard and your child will have met the standard or not met the standard.

We believe that this measure is not helpful to any of our year 6 children who have been the ‘guinea pigs’ of ill thought out and poorly planned short term education policy. We know that our year 6 children have made good progress and we do not want any child to feel like they have not achieved well. The system needs further work and we are concerned that the children will feel disheartened. When the results were published on Tuesday 5th July the national average for those pupils that had achieved the standard in reading, writing and mathematics was 53%. The government stated at the start of the year that floor standards were 65%. This gives the false impression that schools are ‘failing their pupils’ and does little for the morale of hard working staff and children. The children have achieved well and the system has failed them.

Schools in Surrey Heath have been graded good or better by Ofsted. Collaborative work between schools and work in pupils books show that the children within our community make good progress. As local headteachers we believe that this set of data is unreliable, full of inaccuracies and the message it gives our pupils’ is morally wrong.

Our secondary colleagues are well aware of the issues the testing has caused. They asked that we reassure you that the SATs results form only one element of their initial work with your children. Our school communities have high standards built around the development of the whole child. We invest time and energy into building resilience and independence, unfortunately this new way of assessing will undo some of the good work.

Yours sincerely

All the headteachers from the following schools:

Collingwood College Connaught Junior School Crawley Ridge Junior School Frimley C of E Junior School Heather Ridge Infant School Lakeside Primary School Mytchett Primary School Pine Ridge and Lorraine Holly Lodge Primary St Augustine’s Catholic Primary Ravenscote Junior School Sandringham Infant School Windlesham Infant School Tomlinscote School Bagshot Infant School Cross Farm Infant School South Camberley Primary Lightwater Village School Hammond Junior School Holy Trinity School Kings College The Grove Primary School St Lawrence Primary School