From the Guardian….
Six-year-olds need delight, not drilling – this grammar regime is a farce
As a teacher I’m glad the spelling, punctuation and grammar test had to be scrapped this year. We need to stop colluding with this damaging system… There’s little room for deep and meaningful learning, politicians are far too busy ensuring that we are counting.
Listening to the BBC and you might think that the SATs school tests were a new form of enhanced interrogation method one step up from waterboarding and that pupils are throwing themselves under buses up and down the country in response to the intolerable stresses and strains placed upon their delicate and still forming minds.
This morning we had a less than subtle, politically motivated, anti-SATs programme from Marr that told us that today’s Victorian era industrialised learning, designed to churn out unthinking wage slaves to run the Empire, was outdated and unfit for purpose…what was proposed was that pupils were left to their own devices to learn for themselves, being put in challenging situations to force them to learn on the job so to speak, learning through group cooperation without teachers, carried aloft by a natural enthusiasm for learning that is presently stifled by the rigour and strait jacket of formal education in today’s schools….a sort of Lord of the Flies scenario is the preferred outcome I believe. Marr espoused that today’s education system was brutalising and terrifying the kids and not providing them with the necessary skills to handle today’s world…for instance actually having knowledge readily to hand in your head is so much wasted time and effort to learn when you have the internet instantly on tap to answer any question that may arise…why ‘know things’ if Google is but a click away? Goodbye Mr Chips, hullo Micro Chip. Marr, that old lefty, also manages to shoe-horn in ‘class and fairness’ in education throughout the programme. Political? Not a bit of it.
Listening to the BBC you’d have no idea that the ‘pupils’ strike’ was something in all likelihood organised and supported by the teaching unions as a political action rather than out of any concern for the pupils. The response to SATs has been driven by ideological dogma not genuine, intellectual, coherent critique of the tests and the reasons behind them.
Today there are questions over whether the so-called ‘kids’ strike’ is part of a wider political campaign after possible ties with trade unions emerged – and children were seen waving teaching union flags and clutching anti-Government placards.
The unions have been agitating against SATs for years...here they are in 2009, under Labour, giving us their considered opinion as they vote to boycott the tests…..how times change…
Max Hyde, of the NUT executive, said: ‘At best SATs are detrimental and skew the curriculum. At worst, and particularly for our most vulnerable children, they are perilously close to child abuse.’
Our old friend Michael Rosen was a key agitator against SATs…
Starting with the end of the year, the Michael Rosen meeting last Monday was a real highlight. There was a good turn out of members and non-members, and the debate and discussion left nobody in any doubt that SATs are damaging to all in our education system, and must be stopped. It was a great start to our local anti-SATs campaign.
I love this bit of nonsense from the NUTs Christine Blower…
‘We are not against assessment. What we want is assessment that is meaningful, assessment that is more accurate, and assessment that focuses on what children can do, rather than stigmatising them as failures for the things they can’t do.’
Many parents’ lack of knowledge of the tests, their misperceptions of what the national curriculum involves and for some, their own political persuasions, will have been exploited by the unions to generate an atmosphere of alarm, fear and concern that is at odds with what is really going on.
The main campaigning group is all too professional to be anything but a union front…The ‘Let Our Kids Be Kids’ group for instance says that the SATs boycott was “a show of support to heads and teachers everywhere that they will have overwhelming parental enthusiasm for a boycott of Sats and a return to a curriculum based on the joy and wonder of learning”. They have a nice website…and a Facebook page. Not to mention a 38 Degrees page. Who runs all that?
Why are they also concerned now about academies?…
We started this campaign as Year 2 parents against Year 2 SATs… then Year 6 parents came on board to say they’ve had enough. Now a third horseman of the education apocalypse has reared it’s head as a massive concern for ALL parents.
Making schools into academies means privatising schools… our school buildings and the land they sit on are then assets in their businesses… our children are no longer going to go to a comprehensive school supported by parent governors… academies can have their own agendas… appoint their own teaching staff and leadership teams. Who knows what this will lead to for our children’s childhoods!?
All very, very political and little to do with educational achievement. A union front? More than likely.
The BBC though continues to peddle the scaremongering and the tales of traumatised kids…telling us of the wonderful headteachers who are doing all they can to limit the emotional damage to the kids…er….by ramping up the fear and making sure the kids look upon the SATs tests as something to be very worried about. The BBC calls these ‘inspiring letters’...Personally I’d sack the head teachers who sent them out.
Let me summarise them….Don’t forget to sparkle kids, you’re all amazing, unique and special. The people who set these tests are so stupid and don’t know that you are all geniuses in your own right. The tests are a meaningless bore, a chore to be completed…but have no fear, success or failure is mere fool’s play, make-believe and mumming, you’ve been fretting over these tests for over a year as we’ve been instilling the fear of god into you about them for months but not to worry, they, and the knowledge and abilities they test, are so much wastrous piffle. Have some ice cream and sweeties, washed down with copious amounts of frothy cola and self-indulgence and enjoy the hot weather as you occasionally glance out of the window in a moments distraction from the TV or flipping burgers at Macky D’s….better get used to that kids because that’s your life when you leave school because all you will be taught by this iniquitous national curriculum is some life-enchancing knowledge that would enable you to get a good job and make the most of your life…but hey, we, the teachers, don’t want to fuck you up by making you work towards that and stop you having fun, we don’t want to place any pressure on you to succeed, failure is an option…you can succeed at failure…go for it!!! Sparkle!!! F**k the national curriculum! Oh, yes…you are special and unique. Really.
And of course what is really needed is a stress coping strategy for the kids taking the tests….I’m sure there will be a test for that.
We hear a lot about the terrors of these tests but how much is true? Allegedly the tests are far too hard and reduce kids to tears….but the reality is that the tests are set to test a range of abilities and that some questions are designed to stretch only those with higher abilites…teachers can withdraw pupils who they think won’t be able to do those questions at any stage. However all pupils will have the option to take all the papers if they want to unlike in previous years.
Teachers have been teaching to the test and forming their curriculum around it is one of the major claims and issues….but the Department of Education specifically states that the tests are not designed to be used as a framework or guide as to what or how to teach…the teachers should follow the national curriculum. Teaching to the test is clearly very limiting even supposing the teachers knew what was in the test. If you are teaching to the curriculum the pupils should have the knowledge to attain a good score in the tests by default having the breadth of knowledge to cope with most random questions, if not always the academic ability….and the tests don’t just test knowledge but also reasoning and a grasp of concepts and comprehension…the ability to think
Are the tests so much harder? We’ve already noted that the questions meant for more able pupils are now included in the test as a norm, available for all to answer, and that not all pupils are expected to answer these, but in many ways the tests are made simpler…there is no mental maths test, no mind-bending contextualised questions and no English writing test. There will be more focus on grammar, punctuation and spelling and more arithmatic with the knowledge of basic times-tables encouraged.
The BBC tells us that..
Up until last year, Sats tests were graded on levels – for example Level 4 was the expected level for children finishing primary school. But these national curriculum levels have now been scrapped.
Instead parents will be given their child’s raw score (the actual number of marks they get) and whether they have reached the national average.
The raw scores are not the relevant mark….the raw scores have to be processed by ‘scaling’ them….a raw score one year may seem to indicate a better performance than the same score the year before but the tests may be have been harder the previous year…..the converted, scaled, score is designed to allow comparison of the tests across the years taking into account the differing difficulty of each year’s tests. The raw scores themselves do not allow this and would be misleading without an indication of the level of difficulty of each year’s tests.
The BBC has not provided the public with an informed debate in this subject preferring sensation to fact, highlighting the alarmist and politically motivated complaints rather than hold a reasoned and sensible debate. We get campaigners who are more than likely connected to the unions but unattributed by the BBC, we get tales of depressed and stressed out pupils, tears, fears and sleepless nights…but little in the way of genuine information about the tests. If we had that information we could judge for oursleves whether these tests are really so gruelling and traumatic…or this is all about left wing unions doing what they always do…oppose anything that shines a light on the qualtiy of their teaching and their own performance…I suspect not a lot to do with the pupils at the end of the day.
Sparkle kids……
‘Children need learning that matters, that can steer their lot and influence their futures. We need to give them opportunity to improve the world, time to create and craft beautiful work; immerse them in the delights (and the despairs) of the real world. They are ready to show what they know, what they can do, and what they can dream up. But none of it will show up on a test score.’
Despair! This apparently is all too difficult…it must be as the adults seem unable to cope…….and Michael Rosen’s still at it….
The practice exam question for Year 2 pupils was shared on Twitter by Louise Bloxham amid the ongoing debate about the benefits of primary school tests.
It received dozens of replies from users debating the answer after she wrote: “If you think the answer is 65, you would be wrong.”
Ms Bloxham explained the question was posted on a ‘Parents against Primary Testing’ Facebook group where a member insisted the answer, according to the mark scheme, was 46.
However, no evidence has been provided to back up this claim.
Here’s another parent testing the limits of logic…..
Derek Black… Surely the first stop is where passengers get on. Driver goes first at depot, goes to first stop, picks up passengers. Can’t have 19 off at the first stop as no passengers on the train yet
National curriculum assessments: 2016 sample materials
Sample materials for the 2016 key stage 1 and key stage 2 national curriculum tests and information about scaled scores and test trialling
Another great post Alan, and the points you make SHOULD be being discussed and debated too on the Al Beeb due to something called the royal charter and it’s sworn mandate to remain impartial, and report all the facts….. though once again we have the media/propaganda arm of the left, championing/force feeding the public left only fantasies/drivel.
Once again the privileged and sheltered are trying to force others to do what they did not. That privilege has allowed the delusional and idealistic in our society to get into positions of authority within our critical institutions. These lunatics hate everything that has made Britain great and are desperate to create a new world. Like forced mass immigration, the left are now looking to change our education system to something unrecognisable and solely benefiting those who think up this utter shite!
Of course learning is difficult of course most kids find it difficult to test themselves. Of course most children will want this fantasy, make belief dogma “that we can all succeed in life because we are all special” horse shit. Whilst the rest of the world is trying to drive their economies forward with driving educational standards up and testing their young to succeed in this challenging world, our privileged lunatics are asking us to go the other way. Whilst we should be looking to challenge ourselves against the rest of the world, we are frightened to even challenge ourselves.
There are thick kids out there that clearly would love this ‘completely lost the plot’ idea to happen. There are kids out there that will never be able to reach their potential unless they are tested. There are kids that love to be tested. The left need to except we are not all the same. They need to except that bringing grammar schools back is the only way to truly give the lower classes (they keep saying they are trying to help… Yeah right) the real opportunities to succeed in life.
My kids are in secondary, one doing his GCSE courses now. So they both went through the SATs. I am heartily relieved that they no longer do KS3 sats. I am also a trained science (secondary) teacher, with a PhD in Biology. One of the disheartening effects of these regular state exams is that they induce teaching to syllabus, which is repetitive and boring. What was wrong with schools performing their own yearly exams? Evidently the government doesn’t trust them, and so invents its own, with all the associated administration involved, and jobs for the boys (and girls!) Of course primary school kids should be taught to a core syllabus, but flexibility and room for creativity in the teaching is needed. And they should be tested, but as soon as you put a national record on it, it leads to competition, school panic, tutors for kids, parent anxiety etc.
I am interested in the Telegraph’s explanation of the mathematical problem. I’m not a maths whiz but thought that their solution to that problem was very over complicated! If 19 get off the train and seventeen get on, that’s a difference of -2. So effectively two people got off. So add them to your total…65. Someone else can probably clarify, but in my experience, they are so short of teachers that you can practically get in to teacher training without any qualifications – by doing a maths/english entry qualification?? Correct me if I’m wrong. So the outcome is that some primary teachers are not very ‘well qualified’ shall we say – and for KS1 that is probably fine. But then some schools insist that the teachers swop classes, and I have heard of a KS1 teacher being asked to teach Y6 – a VERY different matter. They are doing some serious maths, and english.
Louise Bloxham:
‘Likes Organic, Bees, Butter, Renewables. Type1 diabetes mummy (it’s autoimmune dontcha know) Dislikes Factory farming, GMO, Monsanto, Pesticides, Fracking, TTIP’.
Now let me guess where this character sits on the political spectrum!
Someone stood up QT last week and indignantly said. ‘Let’s keep politics out of education’. I agree and would including education authorities and politically motivated Trades Unions.
The reasons for tests are both child centred and institution centred. The unions hate the concept of tests because their members can then be accountable for progress. Needless to say the collectivist unaccountable status is well-supported by the bBBC.
Good schools MAY have great GCSE etc. results but they also might have ‘poor’ results by conventional standards BUT if their intake had very poor initial capabilities the school may have in fact added a lot of value. Thus another reason for tests is to benchmark individual children and from there progress can be measured. The total of all the individual childrens’ progress gives a quality measure of the school. A combination of school-based and nationally set tests are needed to cover all the bases.
Anything that might call into question the virtue, professionalism, competencies of the public sector brahmin classes-like doctors, teachers, social workers-will always get a panning from the BBC and its agents. its house trained hacks in Broadsheet Heaven.
These exams are only used to grade schools in compliance to “The Greater Good”, and are as far removed from testing children for diagnostic purposes as it is possible to get.
These tests are “written” by GCSE “Bite Size” “Revision Guide” agencies who churn it out of the computer, much as it`s force-fed into the start of the whole fetid process from Whitehall.
Suffice to say that private schools don`t do these tests-for they are for the plebs in the State Pen-the toffs wouldn`t serve such slurry up to THEIR kids-and no true teacher would pass it all on to his classes anyway.
Unions, publishing houses, outsourced political smarmings put through a computer for multiple choice convenience-and, of course the liberal left who despise knowledge, independence or thinking outside the Lefts beehive.
Teach them to read and write, to do computation-get them away from the BBC and the banks of screens-and give them proper history of this country, media training in lies and discernment-and , at least they can learn the names of Muhammads third wife and save their lives at Bluewater sometime hence…until then, they can lead the Chinese to the photocopier £D printer so we can be ripped off, but pay them in the meantime.
The Left and the BBC need excising first-and the teaching unions need removing too. Our kids deserved better-and maybe we can provide it before Islam comes a calling….
Need I add that the same applies to why the left want the lazy boy, Emins bed to wallow in…and therefore stay in the EU.
I mean-imagine having to draft your own laws again, to do your own science and crimework as before 1975-and not being able to pool your incompetencies and scandals anymore-our lefty lazy tossers would have to relearn again-and they`re too thick, too far left to do anything different.
We`ve opened a vein since `1975 for them all, and the Referendum threatens to remove the leeches and the ticks…no wonder they`re not happy…reckon they`ll be even more grumpy on June 24th, I pray for that.
Here’s a fun question for readers.
Look at the Maths question above about the train and answer this question.
Where on the UK train network could this actually occur, for the numbers given to be actually true?
Obviously nowhere near London, that’s for sure.
I’m thinking maybe off peak at Sheffield Meadowhall.
Surely Mallard 60022 will have a suggestion!
Sluff is obviously alluding to the huge success that privatisation has had in increasing the number of people travelling by train, which is all the more incredible since we have the “highest fares in the universe”.
I think the question setter must be harking back to the good old days of BR when you could easily get a compartment to yourself, that’s if they were not on strike over flexible rostering or whatever!
To get back to the question all that one needs to remember is the lost generation who should now be competing with the private school pupils for the top jobs, but because they were the victims of the everybody shall have prizes, no competing, no rote learning, go to your local failing school enlightenment that the comprehensive system brought, they cannot compete. Having seen that “discovery” learning was not working SATS were bought in to stop trendy teaching ruining even more lives.
Good grief, I’ve just realised how we can save the nation countless billions of pounds in public spending and still cram the country with geniuses. It seems the Lefties, especially the Nuts, and the BBCites are convinced that children are so eager to learn that structured education cramp and restricts the ability of children to acquire knowledge.
We should immediately close down all educational establishments from nurseries through to universities, sack all the staff, sell off the buildings and leave children to their own devices. That would mean that in their eagerness to experiment in order to learn and the delight they would gain from each new educational discovery they acquired and absorbed. It would appear that, according to the fanatical anti-test crowd that all kinds of education is damaging to children and only restricts and confines the ability of children to learn and develop.
It really is time we disposed of the outdated idea that children are best educated by being taught in confining educational establishments. It is time to make all educators redundant and free our future generations from their narrow, confining and child abusing methods which all hinder our children’s self-teaching abilities.
Well, if they insist on continuing with their extremist, blatantly political propaganda about the education of children lets go to the ultimate and follow their claims to it’s illogical conclusion that teaching interferes with ability of children to expand their knowledge and damages their intellectual abilities. Free our children from the Luddites of the educational system now and stop the abuse it causes them.
Well, if the Loony Left want to expose their stupidity who are we to stop them doing so, in fact, shouldn’t we be encouraging them to expose it for all to see.