SATs

What is it with SATs? We are approaching these again and all the teachers (and some students) are beginning to go crazy. But this time, no-one has reminded us that they are only a test of the school. Everyone kept saying that in year 6 (in their contradictory way: Don't worry, they're only a test of the school! Revise, revise, revise!) but this year, nobody has mentioned it. Which is stupid. They ARE a test of the school. But they are being used to work out which sets we should be in. How is this fair? 

I was talking to two friends today who totally agreed with me. My parents of course are on my side in this matter... My science teacher, thankfully, has not only told us to revise in science, but in English and maths as well. Not thankfully because I think this amount of revision is necessary - well of course not! They are supposed to be a test of the school as the school is, not as it is when all the kids have been half-killed by stress - but because all the teachers seem to want you to do extremely well in their particular subject, even though people are always saying that you can't be good at everything. Well of course the teachers don't want you to be good at everything: just in their subject. My dad keeps going on about this and I have agreed with him because I have partly understood what he was saying and because he has pretty correct ideas on the subject of what-is-wrong-with-school. Now I fully understand what he's getting at.

A girl at my new school recently moved to Wales; she had lived there before and moved here at the start of year 7, just after doing her SATs. She told us that that year the SATs had been abolished in Wales, so she wouldn't have to do them. Good for Wales...