Mobilise to end high-stakes school-testing!

Submitted by cathy n on 9 September, 2008 - 11:36 Author: Patrick Yarker

Staff and students begin a new school-year with business unfinished from the old one. The system for marking public tests undergone by eleven and fourteen year olds in England’s state schools spectacularly imploded in the early Summer. Thousands of test-papers went unmarked and results were delivered weeks late to many schools. Some staff will be discovering the full extent of the chaos and incompetence which plagued this year’s tests only now, as they face the arduous task of reviewing returned scripts and considering whether to spend precious time and money on the appeals process.

It is likely that there will be a huge rise in such appeals, for test-scores dictate a school’s League Table position and so affect the recruitment of students. Such is the craziness of a state education-system hamstrung by Labour’s capitulation to market-forces. Government reads a rise in test-scores as a rise in standards. Everyone else understands that education suffers because high-stakes testing requires intense teaching-to-the-test. .

In 2004 a smaller-scale version of this Summer’s farcical events occurred with the English tests taken by fourteen year olds. That year saw heads of government agencies making public apologies, promising to learn lessons and saying such a thing must never happen again. An official even resigned. This year’s breakdown enveloped the entire system, and casts doubt on the ability of government to ensure school-testing in England takes place next year. But no-one in government has yet resigned or been sacked. And ETS, the private firm employed by government agencies and responsible for the fiasco, has not had to repay all the public money it received, although its five-year contract has been annulled.

Instead, two inquiries into the debacle have been announced. Both will be led by crossbench peer Lord Sutherland, who as Stewart Sutherland was Chief Inspector for Schools from 1992-94. His inquiries will not consider the merits of school-testing. Instead they will scrutinise the extent to which government agencies such as the Qualification and Curriculum Authority and the National Assessment Agency met their own success-criteria in contracting and overseeing ETS. There is some danger for the Secretary of State for Education in this process, since the DCFS has a responsibility to monitor the activities of QCA. But it is more likely that those running one or other of the agencies directly involved will face the harshest criticism. The government may try to deflect blame by pointing out it has already split QCA into two new agencies, Ofqual and QCDA (Qualification and Curriculum Development Agency.) Ed Balls can also signal the likelihood that a revised system of school-testing will be available for England’s state-schools in 2010, following trials currently being carried out in several hundred schools.

A new tendering-process for the contract for next year’s tests has also begun. The privatised awarding-body or exam-board Edexcel has indicated an interest, while the other two awarding-bodies have declined to be involved. They disagree with the government over the educational rationale of the tests and the uses made of the test-data. A tendering-process involving just one bidder is absurd, which might explain why Capita, with no experience of administering school-exams, is also being spoken of as a contender. The government is likely to have to pay over the odds if it wants tests run in 2009. There are serious doubts about whether in the nine months or so remaining a new contractor can do what is necessary to ensure next year’s tests run smoothly.

So the government is vulnerable over testing, and will remain so into next year. The Anti-SATs Alliance has begun to re-mobilise. It may soon launch a petition against school-testing, and plans a conference in the Autumn. Consideration of a new boycott-call, or other action against school-testing, has begun inside some unions. These activities are welcome. They will help reveal the extent of opposition to school-testing felt by teachers, students and parents/carers. They will focus debate and generate calls for further action. But the failed boycott-attempt by the NUT in 2003 serves to remind that popular support and the energetic militancy of the few will not be enough. Many teachers continue to mark the tests. League Tables and Ofsted judgements exercise a powerful discipline. Many, perhaps a majority of classroom teachers now, have no experience of a school-system without National Curriculum testing. There has been little widespread discussion of alternative ways of assessing students. The case for such alternatives must again be made.

Most problematically of all, teachers are not required now for the administration of tests. Non-teaching staff and/or members of school Leadership Teams can oversee tests and fulfil the accompanying bureaucratic requirements. A testing-boycott by teachers means a refusal by teachers to teach-to-the-test in their own classrooms. This in turn will require that unions declare clearly their support for such a refusal. Since the bulk of test-preparation takes place from January, teaching-unions will have to decide this term whether or not to back teachers in this way. To do so requires unions to challenge the government on policy grounds, not on grounds to do with workload. Such a challenge is long overdue, but will unions be prepared to make it? To do so would have major implications for the current pay-campaign. It would also require agreement about the assessment-procedures to be implemented in place of high-stakes testing. For some credible assessment of the affected cohorts of students must take place. Teacher-assessment could replace such testing, but would need to be subject to credible external moderation, and would probably mean additional work for teachers of affected classes.

After the failure of the original SATs boycott in 1993 to prevent the introduction of high-stakes testing in the ‘core’ subjects at Secondary school, and the failure of the 2003 boycott to secure adequate backing inside the NUT, activists need to come up with an inventive strategy which can bring successful anti-testing action in 09. It may be that action directed against some tests rather than all tests, or action which is focused in one region or area, offers the best chance of success. Ideally, unionised non-teaching staff would come out soon with a commitment not to administer the tests, allowing teachers to declare they will not test-ready students, and enabling classes affected to receive a proper education across the year, rather than one interrupted by the burden of test-readying. But action short of this all-out challenge must also be considered. A third failure by the forces opposed to testing would boost the government as it moves towards its ‘test-when-ready’ system. That system will shackle many more students and teachers to a round of test-readying in each school year, rather than, as currently, towards the end of each Key Stage.

In the first few weeks of the new term, subject-associations for English Maths and Science, the main teaching unions, and unions which organise non-teaching staff, should find out what their members think about taking some form of action, up to and including complete non-compliance with the 2009 tests. The possibilities for different kinds of action should be discussed. Unions need to be in a position to respond immediately to the publication of the Sutherland inquiries. If the Secretary of State does not suspend testing in 2009, the campaign against testing will need to broaden and deepen. We need some form of successful anti-testing action next year.

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