You might well ask: Are tests such a bad thing? It's true that some children quite like an occasional test and a test can give some a great opportunity to show off what they know and what they can do. Be careful though with the 'Tests never did me any harm!' line. Bear in mind those other children in your class who dreaded them, under-performed in them, never did as well as their friends in a test and for whom the test only served to emphasise their difficulties. There was probably someone in your class like the girl in mine whose dyslexia and dyscalculia literally turn tests like this week's into a nightmare, through which she can not sleep, which reduces her to tears and which has required her parents to seek help for her from a mental health worker.
If SATs were just a one-off test administered by teachers at a convenient juncture with the purpose of giving children that chance some of them like to show off the range of their knowledge, skills and understanding, there would be much, much less problem with them; even children like the girl I described above don't mind an occasional test that is balanced with their teacher's understanding of what they can do and isn't the be-all-and-end-all.
The emphasis on SATs in year six though is far too high. Because the success and therefore a perception of the quality of a school is judged by the results of the SATs and schools are compared by them, headteachers and schools' governing bodies are anxious to ensure their results are at least comparable year-on-year and with other similar schools - ideally improving and better. Their anxiety can border on paranoia. Consequently, they can insist on such secondary school sounding things as revision and mocks. Two or three months prior to the actual tests can be spent re-visiting aspects of English and Maths that might just come up in the tests and doing practice-tests from previous years so that children have a sense of what to expect. As if the official tests weren't enough, year six children can end up doing several versions of them in each subject. It's sometimes said that children from England are among the most tested in the world; I doubt that even takes account of these other hidden tests.
I don't think it was ever intended that SATs would be the monster they have become. The Government Ministers who originally dreamt them up can't have wanted the months of preparation for them that can take place now. I wonder if today's Secretary of State and his advisers even know what the tests bring about for children. I suspect they would be careful to emphasise that their only expectation is that the tests be done in May; anything else schools choose to do is down to teachers' professional judgement. Nonetheless, schools do what they do because of the way the outcomes of the tests are used by Government and its agencies. Change that - trust teachers more - and the need for all the test-prep to guarantee all-important good results would be eliminated.
Teachers have at least as much to answer for as Government. When SATs first came along, I wish teachers and headteachers (with the backing of their governing bodies) had administered them as a quick snapshot of what children could do on a given day in May at the end of year six without ever instituting months of preparation. When the inspectors and the local authority bureaucrats came knocking, I wish they'd sworn by the validity of their longer term, thorough assessments for providing a clear, accurate and full picture of children's attainment and progress and insisted that they be the basis of any judgement of their school. Instead, sadly, they allowed themselves to be convinced that the results of the tests were more reliable and they created the culture of the test that prevails today. Frustratingly, it seems they never looked back. Now we must be careful that this culture does not lead to dependence on tests. We have a generation of young teachers and young headteachers who have known nothing different to assessment by test and question their own confidence to do assessment in another way. The tests risk de-skilling teachers and undermining their confidence.
Teachers know children - talk to us and the depth of our knowledge about a child's abilities and the things he or she still needs to do and learn will impress you. We, the children we teach and parents might like a test to affirm our knowledge, but we don't need it. Children do not need a number assigned to them at eleven - be it level three, four or five, it makes no difference to them or their prospects. We know the test results are often not an accurate reflection of a child's abilities - and so do secondary schools; they test children again early in year seven.
Society should trust teachers. Government should take the lead in showing that trust. Teachers must work hard to retain that trust. And we should have the confidence to demand it.
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