Let our kids be kids?

Are the Standard Assessment Tests – commonly known as SATs – branding them as failures even younger?

Everyone faces exams at some point in their school lives, but many people argue that seven is too young to be facing them.

Yet it is in year two of primary school that children take their first set of SATs. There are reports of pupils suffering stress and even nightmares because of their fears over the exams.

And some parents have had enough of them too. Around 40,000 of them have signed a petition against primary testing. On Tuesday some of them kept their children off school for the day to register their opposition.

One of the schools affected was Robert Ferguson School in Carlisle.

Graham Frost Headteacher Graham Frost decided to authorise certain absences, provided he felt the youngsters weren’t missing out unduly. He has some sympathy with the parents’ views.

Mr Frost is also Cumbria branch secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers. The branding of children as “failures” is one of his objections to the year two SATs tests. Another is that they are a blunt instrument.

When they were created, he explains, SATs were supposed to measure two things: how well children were learning and how successful the school was.

He sees nothing wrong with this in principle but argues: “They are too narrow. There are different ways to do it.”

The questions often seem badly designed, and he adds: “At the moment it’s unclear who’s actually designing them.”

There are some where more than one answer could seem correct. And there are others that are just too hard.

One of Mr Frost’s own daughters is currently sitting GCSEs, while a younger daughter is doing the year six SATs tests, taken in the final year of primary school.

He said: “The 16-year-old was helping her younger sister to understand some of the maths. She said some of the concepts were ones she hadn’t seen until she was in year eight, at secondary school.

“I’m constantly encouraging children to aim high. But what I take exception to is expecting this without considering what’s reasonable.

“The phraseology of Department for Education spokespeople is always about ‘driving up standards’. Where do you stop with that approach? Do you end up setting GCSE-style material to younger and younger children?

“Where’s the cut-off point? Will the next regime that comes along notch it up even higher?”

And he points out the tests can’t show the whole picture.

“They only measure what’s easily measurable. Rather than valuing only what you can measure, schools should be measuring what they truly value.”

Yes, academic success is part of that. But he says: “As a parent, I want to know that my children are developing a full range of skills, above and beyond technical ones like English and maths.

“There is success socially, creatively, or on the sports field. There’s so much more to school than these tests.”

He observes: “When parents come to a parents’ evening, they want to see that a teacher really knows their child, that there’s a good teacher-learner relationship, and that children are having a really happy experience.

“There needs to be regulation in a range of measures, including how the children and parents feel about the school.”

Chris McGovern However Chris McGovern, a former headteacher and chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, is supportive of the tests, seeing them as “an educational health check”.

He says: “The sad truth is that currently around 20 per cent of pupils are leaving primary school without an adequate standard of literacy or numeracy.

“They fall further behind at secondary school and, according to employers, are unemployable by the time they leave school. The sooner we know which children have problems the sooner we can take action to help.”

Comparisons with other countries show serious problems, he says. “Britain has become an educational ‘basket case’.

“We are the only country in the developed world in which grandparents outperform their grandchildren in basic skills. This is a disgrace and a betrayal of the younger generation.”

And he opposes the actions of those parents who boycotted schools this week.

“Who will take responsibility in 10 years’ time when today’s seven-year-old is about to leave school without having mastered basic literacy and numeracy?

“‘Mum, why did you keep me off school when they tested for literacy and numeracy? If I had failed then, they would at least have been able to do something about it. Now it is too late and I will never get a job.’

“Yes, we need to let kids be kids but we need to ensure that they have a future too. For short-term pain SATs provide long-term gain.”

And he argues: “Around seven years of age is the right time for the first tests. Earlier, children are too young to be reliably assessed but older is too late.

“Most children, especially children from deprived backgrounds, benefit from an educational health check before entering junior school.”

Irene Roberts-Green Irene Roberts-Green was a headteacher in Carlisle for 24 years, most recently at Bishop Harvey Goodwin School, and remembers when the SATs test first came in. They had a deep and immediate effect.

“I watched teachers become more stressed, I watched parents become more stressed,” she recalls. “They bred an unhealthy rivalry among schools.

“A lot of time has been taken up making sure children get good results in these tests, and it takes out the lovely, innovative things that teachers don’t have time to do any more.”

Mrs Roberts-Green points out that there is a difference between educating and instructing.

“There’s more to school than English and maths and SATs.

“It’s about giving the children a thirst for knowledge and lifelong learning, to develop and become valuable, contributing members of society, to respect themselves and then respect everyone and everything around them.”

She accepts that academic assessment is necessary – but explains that it goes on already.

“Teachers assess children every day, and do formal assessments every half-term. They do that to find out where the gaps are and plan where to go next.

“We need proper assessment by professionals who know the background – not just for the sake of it, so that the powers can be can publicise the outcome.”

And some of what makes a good school can’t be assessed by an academic test anyway.

“It’s obvious when you walk in the door whether something is right – when it’s a hive of activity, when everyone is on a mission to educate or be educated.

“You can see it in the children’s faces, in the lights in their eyes.”

As for the parents who took their children out of school, she says: “I don’t agree with striking. But these parents are thinking parents, who are frustrated because no one is listening to them.”

Rebecca Stacey

As long as the tests continue then perhaps ways needs to be found to conduct them without stressing out the kids unduly. 

Rebecca Stacey, headteacher of Castle Carrock School, explains how she tries to strike the balance.

“We administer them in a calm and sensitive way,” she says. “We make them like special work.

“The children do them in a room they know. We make it feel like a normal day.”