How do you score in a test aimed at 10-11 yr olds?

I passed!!!

DGD (7) has just recited some of her maths games and sayings for me.
I got lost after the first few words

However, I did get a good mark for Maths in my exams.

I see the Department of Education is disappointed in this year's results. I wonder if they realise that many of the children will have been like me and guessed a lot of the answers. The number of questions they actually knew the correct answers to would have been even less.

80%. Luckily I had come across "determiners" since starting to learn German recently, otherwise that would have stumped me. We did do quite a lot of grammar at school in the 40s/50s.
I didn't even look at the maths test. I have absolutely no interest in the subject.

Really badly!!

Fortunately, I got a 100% but then I am a retired English teacher,..secondary school level. However, I agree that this seems excessive emphasis on the mechanics of the language. You do need a grasp of some grammar in order to understand correct usage and, as another poster pointed out, explanations of your errors, but some of the concepts tested here seem rather peripheral and are probably best consolidated through reading and writing. Enjoying using and exploring language is important too.

The reading test was what got parents and teachers up in arms. Of the three exams, that got the lowest 'pass' rate at 66%. The questions were, so I'm told, more difficult to understand than the actual passage which GS said he rather liked, though he didn't get to the end of the questions.

Yes, I am a teacher.

I got seventy percent but the test is a pile of poop. If we want to undermine our children and teachers this is definitely the way to go.

How wonderful to know that, as my GS enters Y6 in September, much of his irreplaceable last year in primary will be taken up by his teacher trying to fill his brain with useless grammar exercises.

So many opportunities to learn and enjoy instead given over to drilling his for these pointless tests.

When will these ministers learn that you don't improve learning this way

How would you have measured up? this is the DfE's release giving details of attainment in this year's SATs. Some of the stuff about grammar must have sunk in judging by the 72% who met the expected standard in SPAG! I was relieved to hear that GS was one of the 53% who met the expected standard in all three test.

Sorry, 'auxiliary'.

Like Daphnedill I scored 100%, and like her I have a degree in languages and have studied linguistics. I don't think there's any contradiction between encouaging pupils to express themselves and to take pleasure in language, and teaching them terms for parts of speech. The technical terms have indeed changed over the last few decades, as the old ones didn't always capture the sense that certain sets of words (e.g. determiners) have the same function, and can occupy the same slot in the sentence. Knowing these terms doesn't of itself improve writing, but neither does it inhibit it. And it can make it easier to explain some difficulties that pupils have. How would you set out to explain why 'I couldn't of done it' is incorrect to a pupil who doesn't know what an auxilairy verb (i.e. the 'have' in 'I couldn't have done it) is? Being able to analyze the language that you're using can be highly enjoyable, and I find it a bit irritating that some people (I'm not necessarily referring to Michael Rosen as I've not read his article) who themselves benefited from being taught parts of speech (albeit with an older terminology) now seek to deny that to pupils. It's true that an approach to English teaching that regarded the use of grammatical terminology as somehow restrictive or repressive has dominated for so long that the current generation of teachers may lack confidence in teaching it, but there are many creative ways of doing so. Is there any other subject where we would feel that technical terms are somehow damaging or unncessary?

I got 60% on the English, but again my 'O' level score was a 2, so the questions are very different. What concerned me was that I have a Maths degree and loved arithmetic, but still only got 56%+ - just shows how things have changed!

I did embarrassingly poorly in the English test, only 50%, and some of those were guesses. I did not understand many of the questions.
The maths, I understood all the questions and managed 100%, but that always was my strong subject.

I just tried the maths test and got 62.5%! This was the one O Level I failed. It worries me slightly that these tests show me being bad at my strong subjects but good at my weak ones

I agree that you learn to write by writing - and, of course, reading.

I was never taught grammar but I believe I can communicate and write reasonably well. However, I can see that having specific terms for parts of a sentence or for the different tenses makes it easier for a teacher to distinguish them and show how they are used. I think it's probably more important when learning a foreign language. I found having no formal terminology for different tenses made it more difficult to learn French.

I do think, though, that the sort of knowledge that the test requires would be difficult for younger children to absorb. I wonder how much real sense it would make and I suspect that using such a technical approach at a young age could stunt spontaneity and creativity - and make English lessons a chore rather than the enjoyable and exciting activity that it should be.

I confessed to GS1's teacher that I had been a total failure at this and she said that the whole thing was a ridiculous waste of time and inappropriate for primary school children. She seems to have a strange desire to teach children interesting stuff..

Well I got a horrific 30% in spite of my grade 1 for English Language at O Level in 1962. Can't imagine trying to get primary school children enthusiastic about this stuff

I don't think anyone ever learnt to write by stringing a lot of grammatical exercises together. You learn to write by writing. Remember the National Writing Project, anyone?
However I am pleased to report that my Year 5 DGD is coping fine with all this stuff and getting plenty of opportunities to do lots of lovely imaginative writing too.

No, it won't, because most of it will go way over their heads.

No, you're not over-cynical. You're realistic.

Hopefully, people will support primary teachers who try to teach their pupils this stuff and give up in despair.

Will it have any lasting effect on our children's ability to communicate in writing?
More likely most of them will revert to text-speak and never write longhand again, or even send a properly written email.
Or am I over-cynical?

I scored 50% in the English - some grammatical descriptions were beyond me and I, too, guessed. It was tough! However, I went on to do the Maths one and got 100%, thank goodness!

I scored 50 %
I remember doing some of this but with different terms. But surely that was in senior school after the 11+

We all manage without it in life. This is only needed for,those who are going to study languages including English.

Candelle, The changes have only been introduced recently, so any effects won't show in the current workforce.

I agree with you about basic grammar, but this isn't 'basic' grammar. Much of terminology seems to have been take from the language of teaching English as a Second Language. For example, like others on here, I had never seen the word 'determiner' until I looked it up a few months ago. As far as I'm concerned 'the' is the definite article and 'a(n)' is the indefinite article, but nobody needs to know that, unless they're learning a foreign language, when the terminology becomes a useful shortcut.

Another example is 'conjunction'. Until recently, primary school pupils were taught that these words are 'connectives'. I don't know why the terminology changed, but the point is that most people can use 'and', 'but', 'when', 'because' etc correctly without knowing the grammatical terminology. I most certainly did not learn about subordinate clauses when I was at primary school. I bet the majority of people still don't know what a subordinate clause is.

The fact that posters on here write accurately, but are still achieving low scores, should say something.

I would like to know who was in the team which came up with this nonsense.