SusanGaszczak

This is a week I have been desperate to get past. It is the week my middle child sits her Key Stage 2 SATS.

She has been using the exams at opportune moments to try to get her own way, but has only succeeded in winning that battle once. I am quite lucky that she is relaxed and calm. She has been brought up with the theory that these tests are to test her teachers, not her. Having said that she is still desperate to achieve a level 5 in something!

Currently eating her breakfast and facing spelling, short and long writing this morning she is outwardly calm. She has been revising for weeks and sitting mock papers, she knows the drill. She also knows that she needs brain food for breakfast. When she arrives at school she will have a second breakfast, provided for by the school, just in case other children have not had their brain food.

My worry is she is only 11, and only just 11. When I went to school (back in the dark ages according to my children) the first I remember of tests were my weekly spelling tests, 10 minutes once a week to check I had done my homework. The first time I remember revising was for my GCSE exams (please note children - not the dark ages), aged 16. Is this fair stress to put on her?

The question though is what does she gain? She gains the knowledge that she is either average (4B), behind where government see she should be (4C, 3A), or ahead of the game (4A, 5). She gains the knowledge of how to sit tests, not really a life skill and the knowledge about how to cope under pressure. BUT she is a child. She should be playing, learning for fun, enjoying the skills of learning percentages, long division, sentence structure, grammar, forces and magnetism.

 What do her teachers gain, the stress of a wound up class trying to do their very best, marking exam papers, the stress of ‘did I cover everything in this paper well enough' and knowing they have to keep the children going so that their school does not appear at the bottom of the league table.

The parents, I am not sure what they gain, some are pushing their children hard, giving them extra tuition. Others do not realise what is going on, let alone understand the results. Most just worry about the pressure of these tests that actually have no value.

I cannot see future CV's saying KS2 SATS Literacy Level 4a, Numeracy Level 4c, Science Level 5. The case that these exams do any good is not proven. MPs this week have said as much, Ed Balls seems to think testing when the children are ready is the answer, and some pupils are even protesting against them.

We need to go back to teaching children, not coaching them through exams.