I found out our SATs results on a cross-channel ferry. This year’s delay pushed them into the first week of our school holidays. I was on my way back from France when the first numbers came through on the dodgy wi-fi. My headteachers, on holiday too, logged in from wherever they were to see how their children had done. We had expected a difficult year. This cohort started school just as our part of Leicestershire went into Covid restrictions, earlier than most of the country. Every one of our schools finished above the national average. I’ll be honest about my reaction, because it is the same every year. Not joy, relief. Then the question: what are we doing tomorrow to make it better? Our SATs were very good, better than I’d hoped, but I had a genuine sense of disappointment. The children had already gone, so there were no SATs conversations at the school gate, no parents stopping teachers to hear that their child had done brilliantly. After seven years in our care, they left without that final moment. My headteachers had the results, but nobody to celebrate them with. Pressure on schools, pressure on pupils For many parents, SATs are the first big milestone in their child’s education. We often say SATs don’t define children. Yet we use them to make decisions that can influence a child’s experience of secondary school for years. The truth is, and we don’t say this out loud often enough: the pressure SATs put on ten and 11-year-olds is directly proportional to the pressure their school feels from Ofsted and the DfE. The test was designed to measure the school. But somewhere along the way, we started using it to measure the child. Because whichever secondary school a child attends, they will be grouped in some way. It may not be called setting, but prior attainment will influence where they begin. Come into a low set in year 7 and there is every chance you will leave in one in year 11. We sort children on the strength of a test that was never built for the job. Determining where children start That is why I care about SATs: they help determine where children start. Where you start shapes the expectations others have of you, and the view you take of yourself. Think what that means when a child from a school achieving the national average of 63 per cent arrives alongside children from a school achieving 90 per cent. Most of the latter will begin in the higher sets. I would urge schools to weigh the context of a child’s primary school before making those decisions. It isn’t easy, but on raw scores alone, some children will inevitably be underestimated. This year makes that even harder. We have attainment data but no progress measures, and secondary schools received the scores late, with staff already on holiday. For me, progress is the more important figure. Two schools can achieve the same headline figure, yet one may have added far more value. Our own baseline assessments show our schools took in children with relatively low starting points and made excellent progress. None of that appears in this year’s published figures. We’ve become good at the theatre of transition. Open evenings, food laid out, welcome events, “come here, it’s going to be great!” From their first day everything is different. They no longer move around school with one friendship group, and no single teacher knows them inside out. Think about October, not just July The excitement carries them through the early weeks, but by October it has faded, and in a much bigger environment many begin to wonder where they fit. That is especially true for children who succeeded because one adult really understood them. So we should spend just as much time thinking about October as we do about July. That’s when expectations settle, sets have hardened and children begin to decide whether secondary school is somewhere they belong. None of this takes anything away from this year’s year 6s, whose first experience of school was during the pandemic. When they came into classrooms, the priority wasn’t English or maths, but helping young children learn how to be with other children. If you met our pupils today, you wouldn’t know they were the “Covid cohort”. That says a great deal about them, and about the schools that got them there. As this year’s pupils arrive in year 7, let’s stop pretending SATs are simply a measure of primary schools. They shape how children are seen from day one, which is why we should pay just as much attention to what happens in October as to the scores published in July.