Kids on strike

I'm not against testing. Any half-decent teacher assesses all the time through interaction with children. Teachers assess whether children have understood learning objectives and make constant (sometimes subconscious) adjustments to teaching. Spelling and tables tests are a way of encouraging children to adopt useful learning strategies. I would argue that assessment is part of the teaching and learning process.

However, tests are not being used to promote learning, but as a big stick with which to beat schools and to justify intervention.

The Key Stage 2 spelling/grammar tests for 11 year olds are totally inappropriate and that's what parents are complaining about. Nobody in the Department for Education is listening to parents and teachers, which is why some parents decided to take their children away from school.

The government will no doubt use the results of the tests to claim that 11 year olds don't know their grammar to justify their mass academisation plans. The trouble is that people won't read beyond the headlines. Of course 11 year olds should be able to punctuate accurately and know the main parts of speech (nouns, verbs, etc), but they really do NOT need to know the terminology for a subordinating conjunction, the past progressive, the subjunctive, etc.

I don't know who devised these tests, but I would be amazed if they had ever met a normal 11 year old - or even a member of the general public, most of whom can communicate effectively without knowing the grammatical terms for the words they use.

helmacd I am glad we agree about testing but sadly disagree about keeping politics out of education. Politics has been in education ever since free universal education funded by the state was introduced in the mid-19th century.

He who pays the piper calls the tune. The aim and intention of government funded free education is to produce a workforce who can be self-supporting and contribute to the economy and success of the the country in their time. It is has always been the government that has defined what this is. It has just varied from generation to generation.

What I do not think should happen at this age is the publication of league tables, although I do think the information about any individual school should be available to a parent considering that school for their child.

Objective standards are necessary. When my DC started school I considered one that was constantly being praised by parents because the education was so good. I visited it and found it rigid and old fashioned and that held back the brightest children. Parent assessment is not reliable.

Those of you who know me might like to take a look at my blog. 'Why can't we let our children learn.? I wrote about this more fully there. I taught from 1952 to 1985 so I know quite a bit about the subject.

Since league tables were introduced and published nationally most school have found themselves in a kind of completion as, naturally, they don't want to be 'bottom of the league table'.

When I was teaching Y6, too many schools took this year group off curriculum completely and only 'taught to the tests' even then.

Our HT and myself agreed we would NOT do this. Our Y6s continued to study Music, Art, History, PE, etc and the only concession to Key Stage 2 SATs was that during the relevant lessons (ie Maths, English and Science) we would look at past papers and exam technique - which made sense to us.

This resulted in happier children, less stress and ditto the teacher!

AND our SATs compared very favourably with those of other schools.

Good question bear - the answer has nothing to do with education, children or schools. Very sad.

Oh bear- a good one! The system for setting and marking is time consuming expensive and complicated. On the bright side a number of teachers and ex-teachers make a bit on the side (but not as much as the organisations setting them do).

So helmacd if you believe "Life is full of tests so the sooner they learn to deal with that the better." should we start a bit earlier than 6? What about 4? Maybe we could sort them into ability groups then and put the less bright ones all together. Or what about 2?
Testing may be appropriate later in school life but certainly not at 6. As I said the SATs were dropped in favour of continual assessment by teachers, a much more successful system and as I said one that M0nica's GD would have been through.

There's just one other thing that perhaps need saying in this debate. The tests make a great deal of money for the companies that run them and the more tests they can persuade the government to impose the more money they will make. Always follow Cicero's advice and ask 'cui bono?'

Luckygirl re pass or fail - it was my poor attempt at being facetious!

As was the question about fines for unauthorised absences - I was referring to the children whose parents are taking them out of school for the duration of the tests. Again with a note of sarcasm, sorry if posters took my remarks at face value - you are all very nice to reassure me!

It is not as simple as that I am afraid - so much hangs on these tests for the school that it is very hard for that pressure not to rub off on the children. These are politically motivated and designed on the back of an envelope - middle-aged politicians saying that this is the way they want things done whilst having no idea of what the task of educating children is about, nor having any professional background in teaching. If you are in charge of a department that is outside your professional experience, you should be listening to the professionals who actually know what they are talking about.

I have no objection to tests that are based on proper professional judgement with the best interests of the children at heart. That is not what these SATs are.

There is nothing wrong with testing as long as it is part of a clear and necessary assessment system. The SATS have nothing to do with assessment and everything to do with government statistics. During my teaching career I regularly assessed children by observation and testing but the testing had a purpose. The SATS rely on children being able to read and write under pressure. I had children who were perfectly capable of explaining how they had achieved a solution to a problem but were incapable of writing it down. Does understanding rely on being able to write under pressure?

DH is dyslexic. He's can read and write but sometimes it takes longer than non-dyslexics and sometimes he misreads/misspells words. . He wouldn't have passed the current SATS for 6/7 year olds because he can't read under pressure and his spelling is sometimes unusual. That doesn't mean he doesn't understand and can't explain things. He was an Area Manager before he became my carer.

Oh MOnica - a girl after my own heart. Sound sense and exactly the points I would make.
Have also read that there was a political motivation behind the push to keep children out of school; it certainly wasn't a child led motivation! And do remember that the Press pick out the most controversial points they can - a child who is struggling, for whatever reason, won't be expected to deal with some of the more advanced questions.
I do believe that it would be far better if politics was kept out of education; politicians are forever fiddling with it yet none are experts, and the number and weight of changes is just ridiculous.
Finally, if only parents would keep a sense of proportion and allow their children to accept that tests are a matter of course, then there would be minimal stress. Life is full of tests so the sooner they learn to deal with that the better.

who would want to be a teacher these days ? no wonder there are growing shortages , with their professional competence and judgement being talked down and disregarded at every opportunity.

Jalima - there is no pass or fail for the child - it is pass or fail for the school if insufficient children reach the required standard. The standard is set by people with no knowledge of the school or the level of SEN pupils in the class. Tests to measure how each child is making progress within their own capabilities make sense within schools; tests that expect ALL children to reach a certain standard and arise from outside of the school are nonsense and do not measure how successful the school is in helping each child to reach their own reasonable standard.

Year 2 children who were taken out of school yesterday will not have missed a day's education - yesterday was not a day of education for them; it was a day of unnecessary tests.

The tests and the curriculum have changed M0nica. Your 5 year old will not have the same experience your 8 year old had. She would have been in the group of children who were teacher assessed at a time suitable for them during Year 2. Your 5 year old will get a standard test she will have to take with all the other children her age.

The education I want for my DGC is one that enables them to be readily employable and able to hold their own in what will be an international world when they grow up.

The whole point of examinations and tests is to test a child's knowledge of the subjects and contents, which are considered at any moment in time, to form an essential part of the school curriculum and that is no different to the tests that I did at school. My DGC (aged 5 and 8) are at a very good school that manages to teach the knowledge for the exam and still offer a creative curriculum.

There should not be any emphasis on tests. Children should just take them in their stride. The emphasis comes from the adults around the child and they shold know better. A relaxed child will do much better in tests than one wound up by the adults around them working themselves into a tizz.

My DGD was not the most confident of children and at first found tests daunting particularly if she couldn't do anything but now, at 8, she is much more confident. She has learnt that failure to know the answer to a question or finding a question too hard is not the end of the world. If she gets something wrong now she asks how and why she got it wrong so she doesn't repeat her mistakes.

M0nica I don't think there was any great emphasis on the tests we had at school. The problem with SATs is they are tests that are 'taught to' that is children are given particular lessons which deal with the requirements of the test- like the grammatical terms. Other areas necessarily suffer. They are also used to rate schools. One of the arguments about this year's test is that it has been brought in very soon after the changed National Curriculum with no time for schools to adjust. Many think this is to do with the proposed academisation-prove a school is failing through its test results then make it an academy.
Parents want more creativity and child centred education.

If I look back to my own schooling formal testing was a constant and integral part of school from the age of 5. Spelling tests, end of term tests, end of year tests. Nobody was bothered about them; parents didn't worry, teachers didn't worry and so neither we did we children.

We have in today's parents a generation that came through school during the the 1970s, 80s and 90s, a time when educational standards were dropping, when educational rigour and challenging children was considered inappropriate and any kind of testing was frowned on.

Certainly children today are learning grammar at an earlier age than we did, but for other subjects; history and geography they are learning less. But the school curriculum has always changed and been rebalanced from generation to generation. In my youth older people were deploring the loss of Greek and Latin from the curriculum. My aunt deplored my limited A level English syllabus compared with what she did for matriculation. But on examination the whole aim and purpose of the English examinations were entirely different.

Jalima, I'm all for children being able to use grammar correctly, but they seriously don't need to know what a subordinating conjunction is. I passed my 11+ too and I'm absolutely sure I didn't know what one was when I was 11, nor did I know much of the other terminology the children are being forced to learn. It's totally unnecessary at that age.

Not if the parents say they were ill. ;-)

A few years ago, the school where I was teaching insisted that all the pupils came into school the morning before a GCSE English exam and wouldn't listen to the parents who wanted study leave. About half the year group had a dentist appointment that morning! Amazing, because when I asked what time the appointment was, most of them were at about the same time with the same dentist. :-o

In any case, there was a court case about attendance. I can't remember the details, but I think the law says something about 'regular attendance'. If the children have attended regularly throughout the year, there are no grounds for fines.

Will they all be fined for unauthorised absence?

Here is Nick Gibb on the subject of grammar:
politicalscrapbook.net/2016/05/minister-who-went-to-grammar-school-fails-grammar-test-live-on-bbc-radio/

Now - is he right because he wants to ensure children are taught grammar properly because he is of that generation who were not taught it at primary school?
Or is it a box-ticking exercise to improve Government statistics.

DGD (7) was poorly today; the school website says 'please try to ensure that your child is in school this week'. So will she 'fail'?

Deedaa, I prefer to hear people using grammar correctly, but that's not what these tests are about. They require 11 year olds to use grammatical terminology which is more appropriate for undergraduate level linguistics.

Parents whose children are on strike clearly feel strongly that SATs are not good for their children's education. They are sending a strong message that they will not subject their children to unnecessary pressure and will help them to stand up for themselves.

LullyDully maybe he would have been happier doing something at home or out and about with his Mum, rather than being the focus of attention in a TV studio.