Year Six SATs: Children In Tears After Maths Paper, Teachers Report

'I apologised to my children about the last four questions - too hard!'

Children left their final SATs test in tears, after being set a particularly “difficult” maths paper, teachers have reported.

Discussing their Year Six pupils’ response to their final assessment at the end of four days of testing, teachers on the TES forum shared that it had been a particularly emotional time.

“For the first time in the 100 years I have been teaching Year 6 I had a little girl cry at the end of this paper. I am not a happy bunny,” wrote one.

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”I had three crying,” added another teacher. “And at the end when I had collected them in they didn’t cheer like the other times, they sat in silence.

“Speaks volumes. I cried after too, totally heart wrenching.”

The general consensus was that the paper was “difficult” but “fair”.

“There was little ambiguity in the questions,” explained one teacher.

“Yes, there were two very tricky questions towards the end, but the beginning of the paper was pretty simple.

“I think the threshold will lower slightly, but not much.

“The arithmetic was a step up from last year, Paper one was tricky. Overall, I felt the maths assessments were fair.”

Some teachers also took to Twitter to share their views on this year’s maths papers for 10- and 11-year-olds.

The person who thought it would only take thirty minutes to complete that arithmetic paper can go and multiply themselves. #SATS2017

— The Primary Head (@theprimaryhead) May 11, 2017

#SATS2017 #maths reasoning 3 - overly complicated, above NC objectives and I apologised to my children about the last 4 question - too hard!

— MrLockettsMathsApps (@MrLsMathsApps) May 11, 2017

Maths reasoning paper had some very poorly worded questions today . Difficult for a year 6 child . Arithmetic reasonable. #SATS2017 #sats

— Steven Walton (@WaltonSteven) May 10, 2017

Phew! SATs over for KS2. Some challenging questions on today's maths paper. Interesting to find out what others think 🤔 #ks2sats

— Helen Hackett (@HyperHelga) May 11, 2017

#SATs2017 Reading was 🙂SPAG 🤔1 or 2 tricky spellings. Maths 😐All depends on thresholds. As long as they are not 😳we'll be fine #emojireview

— Claire (@Clazziebritchas) May 11, 2017

Fair maths today, but some qs put into silly contexts for context's sake 🙄🙈 confusing for less able #maths #SATs #SATs2017 #satsweek

— Jenny (@crisp_aholic) May 10, 2017

Statistics published by Childline on Friday 11 May show that children across the country are “overwhelmed” by stress and anxiety during the school exam period.

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