Tuesday 11 March 2008

SATs RIP

One tiny victory that almost went unnoticed in the Commons last month is likely to have produced a huge sigh of relief for parents and teachers nationwide:
At last the dreaded SATs for seven year olds met their end, after 12 years of threatened boycotts from teachers and heads, and exam misery for many children. Ever since the inception in 1992 of the Standard Attainment Tests, parents and teachers were against them, for a variety of reasons.
There was widespread concern that children of that age should not feel pressured to do hour long exams in silence. Children who found testing unpleasant (and I suspect the majority of kids that age cannot like it) were shown to become stressed and unhappy at being compared to their classmates - in effect being branded as failures. Studies showed that 42% of children said exams made them feel unhappy and many developed problems with sleeping, tiredness and lethargy, tears, irritability or social withdrawal. Meanwhile parents, who were worried about their children being tested but unable to do anything about it, realised that when little Arthur achieved ‘the expected level’ in his Sats, the result was actually fairly meaningless in the great scheme of things. They would have preferred a chat with the teacher about whether he was happy and what his strong and weak points were.
The government’s dogmatic adherence to testing and standards also made many teachers unhappy about spending so much time preparing the children for the test rather than actually teaching. They could see that children being prepped for tests were so busy doing ‘rehearsals’ that the rest of their education suffered - all so that politicians could meet targets and keep the treasury happy. In an NUT poll in 2003 82% of teachers voted to boycott Sats.
Finally education minister David Miliband has seen sense – although unsurprisingly, the test has not been abolished completely. Under the new system there will be a ‘flexible assessment’ of each child at seven. They will still do a test but it will form part of an overall picture, with more emphasis on teachers’ judgement, and more flexible and informal tests, taken at any time in the year, starting next year. Let us hope that the culture of testing which stifles the enjoyment of learning is on the wane and the same flexibility will eventually be shown to 11 and 14 year olds too. Children need their childhood after all.

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