My eldest son is in year 6 and had the maths paper yesterday, his first words to me when I went to collect him and his brother were ‘I don’t know what all the fuss was about, it was easier than the mock paper we did the other week’ . We haven’t made a big thing about the tests , he knows they are about how well the teachers have taught them not how intelligent/good at retaining information he is.
FWIW mathematics isn’t his strongest subject he’s in the third group out of the 8 they have in his year. The local Faceache page was full of parents going ‘poor Johnny/Jemima was so stressed out and worried they were in tears when they finished school’ , there has to be some way for the leaders of the country (whoever they might be) to guage how well the teaching system is working and testing is probably the best way.
Kids nowadays need to know what pressure is like because when they leave school it’s going to happen, the days of everyone being a winner and ‘never mind it doesn’t matter’ have gone and our kids will be entering a global job market where their competition comes from nations that push their youths from an early age.