SATS week, where small plimsoll-wearing people who still struggle opening their own yogurts – no hate – are assessed by several academic papers to determine their intelligence. Some children find themselves in an abundance of self-doubt and worry where others simply enjoy the chance to challenge teachers on how often they can go to the toilet and fake a brutal cough attack. It’s different for everyone but a few things are a given…
1. The mascot
Forget the stress of your nagging teachers, selecting the correct mascot – that your parents would agree to let you take in – was vital. Maybe a teddy or a shiny rock but it’s a given that some cocky boy would bring in their football trophy – this is probably still his only achievement today, don’t worry kids the flash bastard doesn’t win forever.
2. The elbows
The-elbow people, these kids will be prefects, these kids will either be loathed by teachers because their parents are a bloody nightmare or absolutely loved because they do as they’re told and hand their homework in on time. But anyway, these are the kids that manage to cover up their entire paper booklet with their arms. They have trust issues, maybe since their best mate didn’t pick them as a partner in PE but either way they won’t even let you catch a glimpse of the date and you best believe they’ll be demanding extra paper.
3. Bitesize
This place was the holy grail – right up into GCSE science but I’m not too vocal about that. If there was something that you needed to learn, be tested on, revise then you BITESIZE-IT, BITCH. There was no greater thrill than getting home and watching Mona The Vampire then smashing out a 10/10 result on a Bitesize quiz – maybe because it was the tenth time you did the same quiz but you felt the epitome of intelligence at this point.
4. The papers
This was a time where the word ‘literacy’ was used instead of English and Maths was ‘numeracy’ and tracing paper was supposed to act like a weapon in battle. But all you actually did was fuck-up the drawing of a stupid shape and have an extra bit of paper by your side to remind you. I never wanted to see a net of a shape again in my life nor did I want to think about food chains. And I most definitely wanted the ringing in my head of my teacher saying “the answers are all there” to stop, WHERE, MATE, WHERE?
5. Day-dreaming
All my young mind could dream of was these absolute weirdos popping in for the afternoon…
…but no, I had to focus on how the fuck to use one of these things.
Good luck to all the small plimsoll-wearing humans around the world taking their SATS, try your best and one day you’ll exist in a world of trust where you can cut your Frube with a pair of scissors and you can get all the golden-time in the world.
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