Religion and schools

Religion and schools

A challenge to the tyranny of testing

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. In January 2008 Ed Balls appointed Sir Jim Rose to review the current Primary curriculum and recommend changes for implementation from September 2011. Jim Rose, a distinguished professor of education, had already conducted a review of the teaching of reading (in 2006); that was seized on by education ministers to justify imposing on teachers, despite much opposition, a single method (phonics) to teach children to read. As we go to press his report...

Press on to abolish SATS

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. Standard stuff from both Tory and Labour Education Secretaries, who have continually claimed that testing gives reliable and objective information about student progress and the performance of schools, and is vital for the maintenance of rising standards. What’s caused the u-turn? In May the Commons Children, Schools and Families...

SATS: Time to end "teaching to the test"

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. But it is good that the 14 year old SATS are gone. The National Union of Teachers responded with a call for the suspension pending review (why not the abolition?) of 11-year old SATS too. A House of Commons select committee report earlier this year concluded: “We believe that the system is now out of...

SATs fiasco shows folly of “teaching to test”

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. The SATS debacle has left the government vulnerable over testing. The Anti-SATs Alliance has begun to re-mobilise. It may soon launch a petition against testing, and plans a conference in the Autumn. Consideration of a new boycott call, or other action against testing, has begun inside some unions. Why is this action...

Against the "National Challenge"!/ Abolish SATS

Against the “National Challenge” The National Challenge scheme, launched in June 2008, is supposed to push up school standards. Schools have been threatened with being forced to convert into Academies, and could face the loss of specialist status and the removal of funding. The 638 National Challenge schools were selected on the basis that fewer than 30 per cent of their students have achieved five or more A*-C grade GCSEs, including English and maths. Now, according to the Times Educational Supplement, “300 extra schools can expect to be subject to special scrutiny under an extension of the...

End the rule of SATs!

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. The evidence shows: • limited gains in reading skills at the expense of pupils’ enjoyment of reading; • increases in test-induced stress among pupils; a narrowing of the primary curriculum in response to the perceived pressure of testing; • the limited impact of the national strategies on both reading standards and the quality of classroom discourse on which higher-order learning depends; • a much bigger gap between...

Teachers: more testing, more tracking, more tension

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”? In 2004 pressure from parents and teachers forced alterations to testing-arrangements for seven-year olds, granting primacy to teacher assessment and giving teachers greater say in the timing and content of the National Curriculum (NC) tests their young students would face. The current changes have been implemented...

A level row: fight for equality in education

As predicted well in advance, A-level pass rates rose this year, continuing the trend of the last 23 years. To read some of the right-wing newspaper coverage, you'd be forgiven for thinking everyone had passed with four A grades; in fact, the proportion of entries resulting in a pass grade (A-E) rose just 0.2% from 96%, with only 2% of pupils gaining 3 or more A grades. The focus of the media was of course on how “easy” exams are, with the usual aim of defending a more restrictive and elitist system of entry to higher education; bourgeois critiques of the current system are not motivated by a...

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