h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hmmm...
We say SATs, which means Student Achivement Tests, and you say SATS, with the last s capitolised. Does that mean something different?

Oh yeah...
I FINISHED MY FINAL EXAMS!!! YAY! WHOHOO! RAH!
Now I've got another three months before I have to take one again.(sigh of relief) I'm taking one class over the summer, in order to finish off my math requirement ASAP, but it won't be too painfull.

Nah, we just capitalise the S because everyone else does. It makes the acronym look neater, doesn't it?

What exams you been doing?
My SATS are now finished YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!

We have 2 sorts of SATs. The first is the SAT 1, which you take if you want to go to college and it's supposed to matter.
The SAT 2 tests are subject tests which people sometimes are required to take if they have a particularly hard teacher. As for me, I have to take some standardized tests every day for the next 2 weeks, and then 2 weeks after that I have to start finals. Then I'm out.

Ah yes, American SATS. I've heard about these. They sound a peice of piss

(p-o-p = english slang for 'easy')

Well, I guess that clears that up...
I only had three finals to take this time, on account of having to work and go to school, but they were: ENG 101,(write more essays about stuff you don't care about) which was an essay on procrastiation, CSC 101,(everything I never wanted to know about microsoft office, but it's required) which actually really easy, and MAT 098,(exponents, polynomials and other stuff that causes brain cramps) which I spent three days cramming for.
I'm now waiting to find out my scores.
SO....
How were your tests?

Well, my testing starts Monday, but just so you know Mike, the american SATs ARE easy. Very little of it's above an eighth grade level.

Eight grade?

Buff, your stuff sounds real hard, but it's obvious that you're much older than me. I hope you did well cos it all sounds terrible hard!
I reckon I did fairly good in my SATS. I should get at least Level 6 in each one (Level 6 is above average).
As for the internal school exams, they weren't so good. I reckon average marks of 50-60% in most of them. But I didn't know how important the SATS were, and how important a good revising technique was. I'd just had my physics teacher moaning at us in september about them - to us they were just an opportunity for the school to say "look our pupils are clever so come here and earn us money".
When the GCSEs come, methinks I'll get my act together

GCSEs? Can you explain level 6 and other such stuff (O levels?) to me? I'll try to make sense of grades K-6.
K=Kindergarden. children start this at about age five. It is commenly the lowest level of schooling. After kindergarden is grades one through twelve. 1-6 are Elementary School. Grades 7-8 are Middle school. Grades 9-12 are High school. Each of these is in a seperate building, although middle schoolsand high schools are sometimes combined. (but they seperate the students by age. high schoolers are not allowed in the middle school section of the building) Each school district usally has several elenentary schools and only one high school. Also, students usally have only one class during elem., which they stay in all day. In high school, the day is seperated into periods, with one class per. Sometimes middle schoolers will have periods too.
So eighth grade would be about the level of a twelve or thirteen year old. But american schools are kind of bad. Students often get promoted not by achivement, but by age. And the classes tend to proceed at the speed of the slowest student.

Ouch.

Do all kids go Kindergarden? When I first heard about it, I was given the impression it was some kind of 'special school' for young kids.

Ok, for my SATS, Level 5 is average for 13-14 year olds. Level 6 is above average, Level 7 is boffin-level. Some kids in our school can aim for Level 8, the bastards
BUT, in year 6 (that's when you're 10-11 years old), your SATS levels range from 3-5. So don't get the two ranges mixed up.

Everybody's supposed to go to Kindergarten. I didn't, but that's because they wouldn't let me in when I was ready.
American schools can be pretty bad. Often, administrators are more concerned about a child's social interaction than their education. I consider myself someone who fell through the cracks of this system. Because I was two weeks younger than the cutoff, I was put into first grade( ages 6-7, after Kindergarten) when I moved here, even though I could read and write and add and subtract better than many second graders. And it was because of this that no one in the first grade would talk to me.

Okay, to get this straight, your year 6 is simular to our 5th grade, the last year in elementary school, right?

Yeah, Year 6 is the last year of primary school, which would be the British equivilant of elementary, right?

Sorry to hear about that thing. Education can fk you up sometimes...

English SATs Standard Attainment tests, to make sure that most of the pupils in a school are educated to the right standard. All student in the British system progress through their schooling on age alone. There is no possibility for skipping up yeargroups an little for being kept behind. The SATS in the UK are more important to the schools than anyone else. The majority of students don't care because the schools use both the exams and teacher assessment to select which level of GCSEs (General Certificate of Secondary Education) that pupils can aim for. The SATs mean nothing for further progression through schooling in most cases and are not even considered at A-level(18 year olds) let alone degree level.

Having said that most people are restricted by age to what standard they are allowed to be educated, some have the possibility of sitting major exams early, in some cases several years. This is particularly common for language exams for people that are already fluent or more often in public (ie feepaying and very good, another difference between education systems) schools.

Now back to colour codes in HTML. Hexadecimal system (16 values) range for three colours from 00, no colour, to ff, full colour.(dark >0123456789abcdef> bright)

The colours require a # symbol to denote that it is a colour and six further values. The order is "#red red green green blue blue"

For example "#000000" is black and "#ffffff" is white. Whilst "#006600" gives a particularly nice shade green

For certain select colours you can give word values eg "purple" "blue" or "red". these are more limited and it's fun looking through the colours to find which are nicest

Asteroid Lil wrote a BIG article on hexi colours. It is big.

The deal I've been told with SATS: you get decent SATS marks, you can get decent GCSE grades. Though you only need a C to pass, you'll want A grades to be able to pick and choose your university.
But this is coming from parents, who are the only people I know who care about results.

SATS so not contribute to your GCSE results. They just fix teachers perceptions about how well you are going to do. You can get level 8 SATs and still get F grades in your GCSEs but you can also get level 5 SATs and still come out with straight A* grades. It purely depends on the work you put in in between.

Certain universities do use your GCSEs as selection criteria, it depends on the course though. If it is a very popular course, they are likely to have a lot of people applying who will have very similar grade predictions for A-levels. They then use GCSE results as a deciding factor. Some require certain standards in certain subjects to go on (eg a B in maths GCSE to do my business course).

You really want A grades in A-levels to be able to pick and choose your university though.

SATS matter for a very short period of time, usually just months, GCSEs matter for two years A-levels matter until you get to university or into a job. Then it is your degree and experience that count for the rest of your life. In ten years time no-one is going to care what I got in my A-levels, let alone my GCSEs or SATs.

It makes you want to drop out, doesn't it?

"You can get level 8 SATs and still get F grades in your GCSEs but you can also get level 5 SATs and still come out with straight A* grades."
This is precisly the thing that I have been told is impossible by people. So, who's lying to me now, then?

I may be wrong about the F grades after getting level 8. They will enter you for all the higher papers so if you don't manage a B you automatically get ungraded. Which is worse than a fail.

It's quite simple, if you get amazing results now and don't put in any work for the next two years, it is possible to forget what you already know and not have learnt anything new. Doing badly in your exams under such circumstances is almost guaranteed.

However if you do no work at all for your SATs it is equally possible that given an awful lot of effort, you can catch up and do extremely well in your GCSEs. Of course that would probably require having words with the teachers to encourage them to enter you for higher papers.

I have certainly known people with level 8 in Maths SATs come out with C grades at GCSE. And I know people with level 5 English who got A grades.

It does sound feasible. I guess that if you're the sort of person who can get good SATS levels, then you should have no problems with decent GCSE grades.

What a shame this argument is coming a week after I did my first SAT. Still, next time they try to work me hard ...

The SATs are a broad indication of ability they are most important in getting you into the right classes so learning things for GCSE is easier. Mind you the school exams are the same.

So, I guess they're a fair deal then. Just not worth making to much fuss over. I for one did not fuss over them

Wow. I now know way more about schools and schooling than I did before. If I had the energy, I'd write an entry. (assuming there isn't one already. I might not have read the backlog carefully enough, but I still don't quite get the GCSE thing. I gathered that it's some kind of test, but that is all.