There are times, working in the field of education, when I despair at the interference of politicians. The introduction of testing at age seven, announced last week by education secretary Nicky Morgan, was one of those moments.
We will soon have a primary system which tests children as they enter at reception, tests them as they leave in year 6, and now will test them in the middle – at age seven.
Why? The Department for Education says it is so we can be “really confident that students are progressing well through primary school”.
This, I presume, is because this government that trusts teachers so much cannot, obviously, trust teachers enough to take an informal yet professional judgement on this?
“This is part of the government’s commitment to making sure that every child get (sic) the best start in life and can start secondary ready to succeed,” the DfE adds.
I wonder if ministers ever talk to primary school teachers about the impact that key stage 2 SATs already have on many pupils – the anxiety, stress, and other mental health issues that are increasingly cropping up at this young age.
Of course, there are a wide range of issues that affect children’s mental health today, but testing is certainly high on the list. I work often with educational psychologists and the problems they are confronted with on a day-to-day basis in primary schools are frequently down to the high-stakes pressure children feel.
And while this is a primary issue, it is these anxious and over-tested pupils who will arrive in our secondary schools – with those who have “failed” at key stage 2 soon to face the prospect of being re-tested as well!
This is madness when one considers that, actually, testing improves nothing. It does not raise standards. It does not inspire pupils to learn or to want to learn. It does not reflect in any way the workplace or life that awaits our young people.
The sole point of many of the tests that we subject our children to is to allow politicians to “prove” that they are improving educational outcomes.
Of course we need to evaluate what our children know and understand, the skills they have – we need to give them recognition of this as they head into the world and workplace. But to test so frequently, and to put so much pressure on schools based on the outcomes of these tests, is madness. Many other successful education systems long ago recognised that testing is no way to improve outcomes.
It is a backwards view of education, but one that our government gleefully adopts in 2015.
The system is screwed up. Schools are frightened of failing the tests because of the threat of intervention from ministers, schools heap pressure on teachers to get pupils past these arbitrary benchmarks, teachers feel forced to teach to the test(s), schooling then becomes a conveyor belt (a factory as the Confederation of British Industry famously put it), and real education goes out of the window. This is even more so the case for schools that require improvement or in an Ofsted category.
Despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, exam data is all that matters to ministers and many inspectors. No wonder we have a recruitment and retention crisis in teaching at the moment – the workload, pressure and constant central government diktat smash the aspirations of so many teachers.
Stop. Let’s imagine just for a moment – what if we had no tests? What if we did as the government constantly says it already does – and trusted our teachers?
The recipe is simple. Have a schools inspectorate (albeit reformed – and that is another editorial for another day), have a national curriculum (albeit not written by politicians – who are not qualified to do so anyway), and have a highly qualified, well-paid and respected profession. Then leave them to work with their pupils. No need to test at age 5, 7, 11.
We do not even need to test at 16 anymore. GCSEs are defunct. With an education system that now ends at age 18, the only tests we need are at 18 – as pupils pass through to university or onto an Apprenticeship.
(Incidentally, Ms Morgan’s decision this week to make EBacc entry a headline league table measure to be enforced via Ofsted once again means that an unqualified politician is imposing their own subject choice on our young people. The plan will fail to serve students whose talent, skills, passion and future may lie in technical or vocational options, such as Apprenticeships –another example of misjudged central diktat).
By scrapping all these tests we could save millions (imagine how much we spend on GCSEs alone) – money that could be put back into the profession and into schools.
I am not suggesting a closed shop – as well as effective inspection, schools could also be required to publish data locally – for prospective parents and the community – on key issues, such as safeguarding, radicalisation, pupil progress, Pupil Premium etc, etc. I am not suggesting leaving pupils without “qualifications”, but these do not need to be achieved through external testing and do not need to be “delivered” at set ages or stages of education.
This is my view of course. My “ideology” as critics might say. Fair enough. But whether you agree or not, what is clear is that formally testing pupils as often as we do does not raise educational standards. Therefore, we must all reflect on one key question – what useful purpose does all our testing serve?
- Pete Henshaw is the editor of Headteacher Update and has been writing about education for more than 10 years. Follow him on Twitter @pwhenshaw