Calling any primary teachers or anyone who knows anything about Y6 SATS marking

[goldenticket]

Is it true that a child who doesn't always join their handwriting up cannot achieve a Level 5 for Literacy? Overheard this today and was

TIA

[gherkinwithapurplemerkin]

No. At ks3, when we had SATs, English L5 needed to see some evidence of joining - but joining ng occasionally when writing a word ending with ing would tick that box. Work that was clearly L5 standard would not be kept in L4 because it was not cursively written.
HTH

[Feenie]

No, it isn't, gherkin is right. Handwriting is worth 3 marks tops - to get a level 5 in writing you need 36 marks out of 50, which is perfectly possible even if you got 0 out of 3 for handwriting (which is practically unheard of anyway, anyone can scrape a 1).

[goldenticket]

Thanks very much, that's reassuring. I bet there's a few literary geniuses who wouldn't have achieved level 5 if that were really the case, especially the left-handers