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This year’s National Union of Teachers conference, held over the Easter weekend, voted unanimously to boycott SATs in the next academic year if the government fails to recognise the damage the tests are doing to our primary pupils. Conference called for the tests to be scrapped.
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If it wins the next election, New Labour proposes to reshape primary education. Pat Yarker reports on a challenge to the Government’s line of march.
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On October 14 Education Secretary Ed Balls scrapped National Curriculum (NC) testing at Key Stage 3 and the League Tables it gives rise to. But only a few weeks earlier Jim Knight, the Schools Secretary, had asserted in the media that KS3 testing was here to stay.
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On 14 October the Government abolished SATS exams for 14 year olds. The decision seems to have been prompted by the fact that the private contractor (of course) which ran the SATS this year fouled it up and had to be sacked, and the Government had trouble finding a replacement in time for 2009.
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As the new term begins, teachers will be discovering the full extent of the chaos and incompetence which plagued this year’s SATs tests. They face the arduous task of reviewing returned scripts and considering whether to spend precious time and money on the appeals process.
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Against the “National Challenge”
The National Challenge scheme, launched in June 2008, is supposed to push up school standards.
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The Cambridge Primary Review - arguably the most important review since Plowden in 1967 - calls for an end to national testing and a complete re-think of current primary practice.
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At the turn of the year Labour announced a significant change to school-testing arrangements for students aged 11 and 14. But will the scheme solve the problem of the old tests for students and teachers — stress and demotivation and lessons which are designed to “teach to the test”?
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The thing with school league tables is that no matter how unfair, counter-productive and downright reactionary you think they are, you still immediately look up where your kids' school ranked. So today's news is ... My kids go to Brook Community Primary School, the fifth worst primary school in the whole of London, the fourth worst in Hackney. It's a good job I do think that league tables are unfair, counter-productive and downright reactionary, otherwise I could feel quite demoralised.
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It’s 2.30pm on Friday - just half an hour before the end of a tiring week - and Year Ten are predictably restive. You need to move the lesson on but all attempts to settle the class have failed. Detentions are issued, individuals spoken to and you even attempt the trick of starting to explain from the board in the hope that they’ll all realise what you want them to do. Nothing works. You’ve got one last trick up your sleeve (literally): the ‘Hand Signal TM’.
