A momentary lapse of education
Alarm bells began ringing earlier in the year. We went to a school meeting one cold evening, roughly a couple of hundred parents and children in the hall, during which we were warned.
The coming weeks of our child’s education would be…different.
The reason? It was the run-up to the SATs.
Rewind a few years.
While my kids were still in the early years of their education, I remember reading horror stories, of schools bringing relentless pressure and onerous workloads to bear on year 6 children (ten and eleven year olds) in an attempt to squeeze every last atom of perfomance out of them in the Key Stage 2 SAT exams.
Back then it seemed ages away. Now it is upon us, or rather upon Wunderkind, and it is the educational equivalent of a foie gras farm.
Fast forward to that meeting.
In the run up to SATs week, we were told, some lessons (useless, namby pamby ones such as music and art) would be substituted with extra maths and English. Some children may be offered extra tuition after school, because there really are not enough hours in the day. There may be an increase in homework for the same reason.
Suffice to say, Her Up North and myself were apprehensive at this ramping up of the work ethic.
Key Stage 2 SATs are a controversial issue with parents, teachers and educationalists alike. The results of these external exams are made public, and as is the trend with anything measurable, are arranged into league tables. The result is schools concentrate efforts on the tested subjects to eke out a few extra points and push borderline pupils over the arbitrary finish line.
In my view that is to the detriment of curricular diversity and enrichment. It’s like, for a few weeks, there is a lapse of education.
Instead it is a rote of past papers and teaching to the test.
Wunderkind takes it all in his stride, but even for him there was a final straw.
On the last day of term, at the start of the Easter holidays, the russet-topped one came home with three English homework assignments, a maths past paper and some further maths set online. No time to complete it before the holidays. Had to be finished for first day of new term with a threat of detention for non-completion.
On my advice the homework went back incomplete. I wrote a brief note explaining in my view my child deserved a holiday, that it was my decision and that therefore any punishment given to the titian one would be unfair. So far there has been no comeback.
All this makes me seethe. The lessons, the homework, the guidance in the school newsletter for Y6 children to do one hour of online revision PER DAY during the Easter holidays!!
This isn’t education.
It’s hot housing and is of no benefit to the children either now or in the future.
Have you been through this situation with your children? What are your views on SATs and the culture of teaching to the test? Are we merely preparing our children for a tested future, or are we devaluing learning?
Word.
SATs have been boycotted in the past and the relief on the faces and minds of the children is evident.
The intense amount of work and pressure does not amount to an induction into Secondary School life and serves only the needs of the schools wishing to be placed higher in their precious league tables.
At times, education is about jumping through the exam hoops and saying what they want you to say and how to say it but children are so afraid of making any mistakes that their creativity is pummeled out of them to make room for robotic, automatic responses.
In one school I teach in, they have *deep breath* a daily countdown to SATs in every corridor and a ‘big-brother’ eye watching them to make sure they are aware of it, too. That just speaks for itself.
When education at KS2 returns to a sense of achievement through play and GETTING IT WRONG BECAUSE, ACTUALLY, THAT’S OKAY, then we will see happier, contented children turn into less apathetic, aggressive, alcoholic youths.
I think.
You are completely right and I completely agree with you. In Wales we are lucky that we abolished the primary level SATs about four-five years ago, they are the biggest waste of time and do more harm than good. In our school, every child still does a test but we use the NFER yests in Reading, Maths and Non-Verbal Reasoning, the latter helping ascertain the child’s potential and measures under-attainment. They’ll be done next week but the children don’t know about them until they are put in front of them. Our main form of assessment is continuous teacher assessment, which is formative not summative, throughout the year and based on the children’s everyday achievement.
Good for you for refusing to allow him to do the work, he doesn’t need the pressure and it should not have been set. The reason why there has been no comeback or detention is because homework at primary is not compulsary. We *have* to set it, we *have* to mark it but the children do not *have* to do it. Oh and you can’t give a detention at primary level, not allowed to. Which is why they didn’t enforce it.
Oh my God I completely agree. Fortunately in Ireland we don’t have SATs (yet) but the whole pressure on kids and onus on exams is still evident. Not all kids are academic and not all jobs in later life rely on academia – why do we not allow kids a more rounded ‘life-skills’ education that will stand to them for the rest of their lives and not leave half of our children floundering in the lower level streams.
Well done for your stand on holiday homework!
I am dreading this stage. Primary school should be for play and learning. Let kids be kids I say. Good luck
I don’t have a clue about SATs as they didn’t exist when I was at school.
I have mixed feelings on this. I think it teaches you a life skill to learn something under pressure and to complete things to a deadline. That’s what I do in my job every day, and school prepared me for that.
Equally I agree with your stance of letting him have a break over Easter, but when it comes to GCSE, A level and degree, Easter is the vacation that is sacrificed for revision, so that will become an issue again.
I excelled at school, so I probably come from one angle. But equally I was as good at maths and english as I was at Art and science, so I was an all rounder and not a *geek*
You can’t help but understand that the schools want to get the scores up when it is what they are measured by……
I don’t know, it’s a difficult one.
You could always opt out completely and go to a Steiner school
Liska x
Ah but we’re not talking about secondary exams here, we’re talking about primary ones. I see the effects of too much stress put on children every day, an exam shouldn’t add to it.
Really dislike this “teach to the test” mentality that the teachers have for most of Year 6 ~ daughter is due to do her SATS on Monday and she knows, to the exact point, what she needs to get for each test to achieve what the teachers expect from her.
She missed all her Spanish lessons within school this year because they are giving them extra Maths instead
They also handed out homework and massive projects over the Easter holidays. Whoops, we forgot about them and daughter then did them last week when she returned to school.
I understand the need for testing and preparing them for secondary school but there must be a better way for them to achieve an “all-round” education.
‘This isn’t education’ I completely agree too. I’m so glad we don’t have SATs any more in Wales. I can’t imagine the stress of them and an hour a day of homework is just wrong. My children seem to be tested without their knowledge which is, I think, a good idea for primary school children. I’m not surprised it makes you seethe. Hopefully common sense will prevail one day.
I was one of the lucky kids who breezed through school, didn’t stress about exams at all and usually managed to finish homework without too much difficulty (and sometimes quite successfully blag my way way out of it…) My brother was not so lucky and had a terrible time with exams/revision/homework. It would be fair to say the pressure ruined his childhood. And that was before all this ridiculous testing kicked in…
I have another few years before all this kicks in for my LM but I hope to God they have found a better way to a: measure a 10year old’s ability and b: a school’s performance by the time we do get there!
Home education is always another option…
When they were mentioned earlier on in the year I knew immediately that Amy wouldn’t take part in them. It isn’t that she’s not capable, many children with a statement are very capable, but I wasn’t prepared to put my daughter under unnecessarily pressure for the sake of the school looking as though it is achieving better than it is. The school is a great school and doesn’t need all this nonsense in the form of SATs. I wouldn’t have sent my daughter there is it was a crap school. So I had a meeting with the Headmistress and opted out of them. She totally agreed that it was ridiculous to expect Amy to do them and was happy at the decision we’d reached.
However, Amy writes a diary everyday so I can see what she’s been doing and what she’s had for lunch. Anyway, the other day she had made a note of her doing tests. Hmmm, I thought, does this warrant a phone call to school? I’m sure she isn’t doing the actual SATs but they are just trying not to segregate her from the rest of the class. She does extra activities called life-skills as part of her statement and these could be increased during SATs. I’ll be straight on that phone if I get a sniff that Amy’s partaking in these absolutely ridiculous and bizarre tests. Children need to be children. Homework is unnecessary in my opinion (Amy doesn’t get it because she can’t cope with it) and to expect children of this age to revise during holidays is an absolutely disgrace.
Rant over.
Have a good weekend, CJ xx
Daughter of Mine is sitting her SATS next week. I’m lucky in that she is not too worried about them, but plenty of her classmates are. I’ve reassured her that these ‘exams’ have no bearing on what she studies in secondary school, or what choices she makes in later life, and I feel as long as she does her best (as with everything she tackles) then that’s good enough for us both. From what I hear and see from working in a secondary school, the pressure is on from Year 7 whether we, as parents, like it or not, so a little taster in Year 6 can’t be a bad thing.
What is bad though is that schools are pushed into having to publish SATS results, rather than just using ongoing tests to assess progress. I also fail to see why some parents place so much store on a small percentage point difference in academic achievement when choosing a school for their child.
Again, I am lucky that my daughter’s school doesn’t hype up the pressure out of proportion. One hour EVERY DAY during the holidays? Daughter of Mine had one practice paper for each subject to complete over Easter which wasn’t as much work as some of the project-based homeworks she has had in the past! This weekend she has been asked to do look at some online practice papers as revision, which I don’t think is excessive.
I will still be glad when next week is over, along with every other parent in the country! Wishing all of our children well next week with whatever they do…
Interesting post, we’re not ‘there’ yet and in fact our school has opted out of SATS. I had no particular opinion of this until quite recently. My eldest is in reception, my youngest starts in September. It’s an oustanding school, massively over subscribed etc etc. But I have a few tiny niggling doubts and have heard too much about children having tutors for maths/science from Y2. So, in ‘some’ ways I quite wish they did SATS so I could see how they are doing but (a) what is it ‘really’ measuring other than the school and the pupils’ ability to swot for tests and (b) actually I don’t want my children being crammed and assessed at such an early age. And I can’t have it both ways.
Good for you for letting your lad have a break. He’s so young. Time enough for cramming when he’s older.
Spud
bang out of order – and good on you for fighting back – its just outrageous
Totally agree with you! In Florida we take the FCAT in elementary school every year and each school is given a grade based on how their students perform. Those given an A get extra funding and those that receive and F two years in a row are closed. If you ask me, the schools that are obviously already working aren’t the ones that need more funding. Teachers who’s students preform well, also get bonuses. This makes things like interactive educational experiences and real world applicaton take a back seat and it is all about memorizing formulas, essay structure, vocab words, and how to properly fill out an exam sheet. To make matters worse, students who don’t perform up to a certain level in just one subject area have to repeat the grade, regardless of their classroom performance otherwise.
good for you making a stand over the holiday homework. I know many parents who become obsessed and pile the pressure on their children, whereas an education is about so much more than test results. I hope that when the time comes I’ll display the same sense that you have.
I agree it’s crazy – I really hate that at 11 children are being taught to the test so it isn’t really about their real ability just about them remembering specific things.
The biggest littlesheep is only in year 2 and as far as I can work out the school are very low key about their assessments but one of his friends at another school had a pile of papers sent home for the Easter holiday and children at that school were getting extra lessons after school – this is SIX year olds – total madness.
There should be enough time in school for teaching the curriculum and out of school should be for fun and consolidating learning in the real world.
I think they cause a lot of stress that is not needed. I also agree with them needed a holiday. My personal opinion is it is too much too soon, there is so much pressure in GCSE’S etc just let them have a few years at school that aren’t filled with exams etc. xx
The word SATs entered my kids’ vocabulary this week. Monkey was looking at the school calendar and all the Y6 SATs tests were marked on there. He asked me what they were. I said they were tests. Last year, they boycotted the tests but still did their own assessments.
I think it’s frankly ridiculous. It means absolutely nothing. I can’t see how it makes a school better to get 2 points more than another but I’ve witnessed the rush to a certain school when they have the best SATs in the area – even though the rest of the schools are close behind. Surely it’s about which school suits your child best – and surely the results also depends on the ability of the children taking the test which is by nature variable. You certainly cannot reduce a bunch of individuals to a number for a league table.
I’m dreading this stage. I’m really hoping that in the five years between now and Monkey being in year 6, they sort this out, and perhaps stop them. I was hopeful last year when they boycotted the SATs that this was the beginning of the end but it doesn’t look that way now.
You definitely did the right thing. Kids need a break over the holidays – we had reading books but we rarely did them with the kids over the holidays. They valued the break and were keen to go back. A holiday crammed full of cramming wouldn’t do that. Getting a rest probably automatically increases your score at that age.
My son’s school boycotted the SAT’S last year to my relief.He is a ‘worrier’ and the stress he would have suffered would have been horrible to go through. The boycott has made no difference whatsoever to his high school class placing, they are just done to make the school look good which is disgusting considering the age of the kids involved. They will have to cope with this exam stress when they get a bit older but for the time being…let them be kids and leave them alone.
Brown eyes starts his SATs on Monday. He was ‘lucky’ enough to be given 10 one hour one-on-one extra maths tuition lessons in preparation while missing 10 hours of the education his classmates were getting. It was also ‘preferred’ that all Yr 6 attend an after school club called Biscuit Club. Where, in return for their time doing extra maths and english, they were given a biscuit.
Brown eyes has luckily thoroughly enjoyed his extra tutes but Biscuit Club was apparently boring and the biscuits pretty rubbish too.
He doesn’t seem phased about Monday but I’ve played the whole thing down and evaporated any stress that way be lurking.
These SAT tests benefit the school more than the child I feel.
SATS are a measure of the school not of the child. I agree with testing a child to see where they are and identify areas where support is needed. But this is not SATS.
I explained this to my two when they were old enough to understand and just asked them to try their best and it wasn’t them that was being tested. We managed to get through them reasonable unscathed but feel more pressure is now being heaped on children than ever before. Its wrong and should be scrapped.