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If you want to know how important SATs are, ask a Year 7 teacher.

This week is the first 'SATs week' since I left teaching. Although I am no longer part of the process, I have been thinking about it a lot over the last few days, and it would be remiss of me not to write a post summarising my feelings.

I have seen lots of examples on social media from compassionate and creative teachers explaining how they have gone above and beyond to make the week as pleasant as possible for their children, as we did. I applaud them, of course, but instead of feeling inspired by their commitment to their children, it just makes me sad.

Yes, school should be challenging, and we should have high expectations, but it cannot be right that we expose the children to something so unpleasant that we have to counteract it by spending our own money on them just to 'get through' the experience.

Some argue that we are preparing the children for the next stage in their education by teaching them how to 'do' exams in the relatively friendly environment of primary school, but I don't buy it. Children aged 10 and 11 are not emotionally ready for the pressure of this kind of experience, and when you look at the emotional age of our children in 2025, many are significantly below this. Don't get me started on exemptions to the exams - have you seen how poor a student needs to be to qualify for this? What about children who work more methodically than others and might not finish the test? Is it right that they are 'punished' for something that we would praise in a normal class situation.

Obviously, the biggest argument for SATs is that they measure the progress children have made over the last six years. But do they really do that? No, of course not. What they actually measure is how good children are at taking an exam, which often has little to do with their actual ability. They also measure how well the school prepares children for their exams, so they cannot realistically be used to compare the quality of teaching in schools. Of course, the knock-on effect of all this is that SATS prep takes over year six early on in the academic year, reducing the amount of learning that takes place in their final year in primary school and reducing year six teachers to the role of exam facilitators.

The impact of SATs is also felt post exams, as the children completely switch off from their learning, so the summer term is a write off too.

If we have to do something, then we all teach to the national curriculum so why not just ensure that teacher assessments are standardised? There, easy wasn't it?

I can honestly say that I hugely regret not being one of those headteachers who boycotted SATs during my time as a school leader. I think I felt that it would be meaningless in the bigger picture, but I should have followed my heart.


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