Brighton Sky Blue
Well-Known Member
Don’t disagree as such, however I feel there is an argument to be made on the timings of when they take place... I’m not convinced it’s a productive way to start big school. I used to be a big fan of them, but years of scrutinising the data from them told me I didn’t learn anything I already could get from CATS and especially reading age which should have the biggest profile of all IMO.
The average reading age to access GCSE content is 15 and a half years. 25% of kids doing GCSE’s have a reading age below 13 years. That’s essentially writing off all those kids before you start because they struggle with Tier 2 and 3 words - never mind your subject specific terminology, your contextual words and abstract language.
We expect kids to read and interpret 19th century Dickens or 16th century Shakespeare when they would struggle with Harry Potter.
I agree the timing should be sensitively managed, but all the same teachers need to know what they're dealing with and data from primary schools is more often than not unreliable.