Some common sense ... perhaps

So, it transpires, that there are more Sats papers missing and now there is a big search on to try to find out where they are and just how many.

The question still needs to be answered about the viability of continuing with a system that few will now have any confidence in.

Perhaps this company ETS, with all of its inadequacies, have done my cause a favour. Just maybe we will now see some more radical rethinking. Today, previous Education Secretary Estelle Morris says in a BBC News item:

Ed Balls should not resign over the Sats problems - but he should use them as an opportunity to overhaul the testing system.

Hope he listens ...

A Sat too far ...

I have always had a high regard for Ken Boston, the head of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, but it appears that someone has fed him the wrong information. How can he say categorically that ... the current position is that in Key Stage 2the marking is now 100% complete ... when it so obviously isn't? Newspapers and media agencies up and down England are find this out and today the BBC report yet again on the failure to get the thing sorted.

This all indicates a mess but what worries me even more is the reaction of head teachers up and down the country who have used it as a rallying cry for something I don't understand.

The children have put their heart and soul into this. That's what hurts. I've had to speak to the children this morning to tell them nothing has come back. said one headteacher in the BBC report.

Sats are not fit for purpose and educationalists have been saying this for long enough now for someone, surely, to listen. This latest problem is just that - a problem. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that we should have stopped testing children in this way some time ago and simply haven't.

The fact that heads, teachers, parents and the media have used it as a rallying cry for something or other is strange. None of this is going to materially damage children, teachers, schools or education as we know it ( pity in some ways really, it could have initiated a period of great change). The educational effect will be an absolute minimum and systems that have been developed just to satisfy the beast of Sats have, at best, had there time and effort misplaces and at worst could be accused of missing the point of education itself.

As I have said before, several times, time to stop this. Let's not get sidetracked by a company that has failed to deliver on its contract ( to collect, mark and return) let's concentrate on the real issue. Sats must go !

SATs - time to call it a day !

On Sunday last I flippantly commented about 'not being bovvered' about the delay in the reporting of the KS2 and KS3 SATs results this year. Today I am commenting on the reported mistakes in the marking.

By the BBC's reported account it has failed to meet up to the standards set and many children/students/schools/parents are going to be supplied with the wrong results. Even if the results are correct, if some are wrong, who will believe the others. People will be prepared to believe the good but not the bad ... over inflation is just as much a problem here as under inflation.

Surely time to call it a day ... it does no good, it doesn't work, it costs lots of money, it diverts attention from real teaching to just focusing on testing and it upsets very many people.

Let's stop it once and for all ...

A test by any other name would be ***** as sweet !

I told myself that I was not going to get on the yearly band-wagon of dissing the SATs ... but it is hard ... there is no doubt about the fact that they are not good for children, parents or schools ... they may be good for the Government but I am not even sure of that as each year they spend an inordinate amount of their time and effort justifying them !

Today the BBC is on it usual rant about them quoting the Government Committee:

The national testing system in English schools is being misused to the detriment of children's education, says a report from a committee of MPs. The Commons schools, children and families committee says teachers spend too much time "teaching to the test". "The inappropriate use of national testing could lead to damaging consequences," warns the report. Schools Minister Jim Knight welcomed MPs' recognition that the "principle of national testing is sound".

I love the way that Jim Knight missed the plot by a political mile. On BBC news this lunch time he bumbled his way through some very straightforward questioning that would not have convinced anyone.

It is heartening to note that some schools who have for years put their children through their 'paces' by using the non-compulsory SATs for Y3, Y4 and Y5 have this year declined to do so ... hooray for common sense and teacher professionalism.

Panorama last evening also did its best to add fuel to the fire by, I think, taking the side of the children ... the best bit of it was the progressive use of ICT to demonstrate emotion by using animation in cartoons ... excellent. I would download the video and embed it here but my technology in cahoots with the BBC will not allow me to do this ... Why not ?

The answer to all of this is to simply stop doing it. Other countries don't. All of the justification is based on a political concept of 'what parents want'. Just think what the money could have been spent on to support and advance teaching and learning ... I would love to know how much it all costs ...

PS I was in a school yesterday and had a good look at the KS2 Science SATs ... I thought that they were really quite clever in the way they were put together and the questions they asked. Talking to the teachers quickly showed me that the science understanding was masked by the pupils' ability to read and then understand the question ... there were times that it wasn't science that was being tested.

PS.

25th May 2008 ... a report just in concerning '8th Grades in New York refuse to take the test'