SATs week: a parent's checklist

By SATs week the marks are largely decided. What is still in your control is sleep, breakfast, calm and getting to school on time — which is genuinely more useful than any last-minute revision.

The weekend before

Stop revising. Whatever has not been learned by now will not be learned this weekend, and the attempt costs sleep and mood, both of which do affect performance.

Do something ordinary and enjoyable. The goal for Monday morning is a child who is rested and not already exhausted by anticipation.

Practically: find the school's timetable for the week and check what your child needs to bring. Some schools do a breakfast club during SATs week — worth knowing about in advance rather than discovering on Tuesday.

Each evening

Bedtime as normal, or slightly earlier. Not dramatically earlier — lying awake for an hour because you were sent to bed at eight is worse than the usual bedtime.

Bag packed the night before. Whatever the school asks for, plus a water bottle.

Do not ask how many they think they got right, or what came up. It invites a child to re-sit the paper in their head all evening, and there is nothing to be done with the answer.

Each morning

Breakfast, even a small one. Something with a bit of protein holds better through a morning paper than toast alone, though a child who eats something they like beats a child who eats nothing on principle.

Leave early enough that lateness is impossible. Arriving flustered is a real and entirely avoidable disadvantage.

At the door, keep it light and low-stakes. "Have a good morning, see you at three" does more good than a final word of encouragement about doing their best, which lands as pressure however it is meant.

After each paper

Ask about the day, not the paper. If they want to talk about it they will, and then the job is to listen rather than to diagnose.

If a paper went badly, resist fixing it. There is another one tomorrow, and confidence going into it is worth more than an accurate post-mortem of yesterday.

No revision between papers, including the maths ones. It changes nothing and costs the evening.

When it is over

Mark the end of it somehow. It has been a long build-up for them, whatever the adults think about how much the tests matter.

Results reach schools in July and are usually shared in the end-of-year report as scaled scores, with whether the expected standard was met.

Whatever the number says, it describes one week in May of one year of primary school. It is worth saying that out loud when the report arrives, because children remember these numbers far longer than the adults expect.