Does it really matter what assessment/measuring has become, as long as we get on with the teaching? Well, yes, it does, because it permeates the nature, purpose, outcomes and effects of our education system.
Teaching to the test has become the norm in Years 5 and 6: when decisions have to be made on what to teach, how to deploy staff, the emphasis that will be put on anything, the most powerful consideration is always the impact on SAT levels. This is hardly surprising. Judgments on primary schools’ effectiveness are principally made on the basis of their SAT results, so schools naturally force those results to look as good as possible by forcing their teachers to do the same. Pupils and staff are bullied, a climate of fear is created in schools and LAs, there are endless (apocryphal?) stories of cheating, the entire curriculum and allocation of human resources in the year leading up to the test is skewed to get the results. Children not likely to look good in the results are effectively abandoned, expensive interventions are forced on borderline children to squeeze them into the sausage skin of a level 4 at KS2.
Pupils and their parents are consistently lied to about the importance of the tests the children will face. Half an hour spent browsing the educational shelves in WHSmiths gives an insight into how publishers push their expensive aids, often using the word ‘pass’ in relation to SATs: the fear spreads to parents. Families at my school can’t afford private tuition but I would bet my pension that there are large numbers of tutors at work in this country helping to prepare children for SATs.
What do we do with the SAT levels generated at such financial and human expense?
KS2 SAT levels are only used as a rough guide to anything by secondaries because they know how unreliable they are. I dread to think how many KS3 children at a new school have been placed in entirely inappropriate courses, groups or settings because of inflated SAT results. At a school I know, a secondary phoned up to check that they had just welcomed the correct child who had a SAT level 5 in English, but was working at a real level of low 3, the child even had some indications of dyslexia! As to variations between feeder schools for secondaries, the sky's the limit! Teacher insecurity, management’s craven attitude to OFSTED, league tables, coaching and the look good culture make KS2 SAT results unreliable for determining any new Y7's level of attainment, particularly in the tested subjects. The practice of extrapolating capability in order to create teaching groups in other subjects is doubly misleading.
End of KS1 SAT levels do not carry over to KS2 within the same primary school: a child with Level 3 at KS1 SAT would not be viewed as such by a year 5 or 6 teacher and would definitely look very alien to a KS3 colleague.
Schools are caught between a rock and hard place: they want their KS1 SATs to look good but then it appears that Years 3 and 4 are years of poor progress (the so-called ‘dip’), some children even go backwards! I was once asked to reconsider my targets for my year 4 class, because they didn’t show enough progression from their KS1 SAT results, I refused but the head changed them anyway.
Education has been distorted and redefined to suit a system of measurement which allows bureaucrats to fit children, teachers and schools into a spreadsheet and measure them to 2 decimal places. I for one am truly sick of it.
6 comments:
Problem then is you have teacher assignment levels which we all know doesn't work as teachers are pressured to make levels appear higher.
While I agree to much testing goes on at the moment.
But until we get rid of culture of levels and peg ion holing our students into an education system that doesn't suite them or thier learning style. It maybe best system we can use.
Who knows...
I think you've got the point Russell, it's actually the pressure that is the root problem and that pressure is not supportive, it is punitive, pressure in its easiest and most damaging form.
Good schools try to respond in the best interests of their pupils but, sadly, I believe the government and their minions are truly indifferent - they only care about the numbers.
Whilst I agree with with many of the aspects that you have discussed I feel that you do a diservice to your KS2 colleagues and please don't be fooled into thinking that just because a child has mild or even severe dyslexia they could not achieve L5 in English.
I think you will notice that my problem is with the system, not my hardworking colleagues who have to make it work out of a sense of self-preservation first, the good of their children second.
The 10 year old I knew with signs of dyslexia had no chance of achieving L5 in the next 2 years, let alone in his KS2 SATs.
I wouldn't presume to make any general statement about dyslexia, I don't know enough about it, in this case just what I had been told by his classteacher.
So much divide and conquer! Secondary teachers do not hate, or are wary of, primary teachers - and vice versa. The problem is the testing system imposed from elsewhere.
Good to read your lucid and pertinent comments BB. I wholeheartedly agree with your notion about the whole SATS milieu being a charade. I would add, though, that playing the game for Heads and schools is rewarding. Transforming your school into an exam factory where assessment after assessment, and the micro-managing of progress becomes the sole metric of any value can mean success on so many levels: big pats from LA; Ofsted off your back; commercial foregrounding of school and the obvious corollary - numbers rising. Is it any wonder that so many schools participate. Or so many use rather fuliginous methods. Techniques such as: having the test read to children who don't need it reading? Adult can then drop a few non-verbal (and, who knows, probably verbal) clues about what to put where; ensuring lots of adults are available while the test is going on to point at questions and suggest children should look at it again; or putting thumbs up when they get an answer right. I've come across this kind of behaviour and much worse. It is cheating, but, without condoning the behaviour, you can hardly blame the school when the rewards and consequences are so polarised. The wider question is why has so much value been placed on these silly tests? And the answer, I suggest, is this deluded idea that a school's worth can be reduced to a quantitative figure. Adjunct of the government, Ofsted appear to believe this is so. However, their agenda, isn't about raising standards, it is, I believe, about the subordination and control of a profession. When one looks at other educational systems that thrive and are way ahead of us: Japan, Finland, etc. They offer a pedagogy devoid of tests with the profession attracting the brightest graduates and the emphasis on homogeneity and fairness with school's being quasi-autonomous creative institutions. Again, this beggars a question: if this is common knowledge, why aren't the individuals shaping the profession acting on this to raise standards? I would suggest, it's because they really aren't interested in this agenda. And this is right across the public sector. The political class is converging and they are desperate to adumbrate their relevance to the electorate. Kicking the public sector about is one of the few arenas they can suggest they make a difference. And I have to agree they do make a difference - a wholly destructive, demoralising, infantalising difference.
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