Getting testy ... many children find Sats an ordeal. Photograph: Garry Weaser
Of all the despairing stories I've heard about Sats this week, this has got to be one of the most depressing.
A teacher-turned-tutor wrote to EducationGuardian.co.uk to say she found a girl with reading difficulties, whom she helps once a week, sobbing in distress after sitting her Sats and not being able to read the instructions.
She had asked her teacher to help because she couldn't read the long words, and the teacher, as they must under exam conditions, told her to try harder and do what she could.
In the tutor's words, the girl is now deemed "a failure" - at the tender age of seven - "and they wonder why under-achieving teenagers take to the streets and alcohol?"
Teachers say the organisation of the Sats, by a new company ETS Europe, has been a "fiasco". One teacher I spoke to had called ETS Europe 20 times in the last week about not receiving the wherewithal to return Sats papers for marking and had still not been called back by a senior manager, despite repeated promises, hours before the deadline.
One union official expects a question in the English short writing test to turn out to be a "spectacular own goal". It asked children to write about their best memory of school this year - to which many replied, "It's been the worst time of my life, revising for Sats."
As Sats come to a close this week, what have your experiences been? Do they pigeonhole children at too early an age? Have the tests, and their organisation, been a nightmare? Or is this year no worse than usual?
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