AIBU to think our kids have been set up to fail?

[theluckiest]

There are heated conversations in Education about this but I really feel everyone should know what's happening - I have only been teaching primary for 5 years. However, for most of that I have taught Year Six. This week I came close to quitting a job I love and think I'm good at. This isn't about pay or conditions. This is about a system designed to make kids fail - the new 'expectations' for an 11 year old will ensure that most children this year will simply not reach them. They will be judged as 'working towards' ie. not good enough. AIBU to think this is going to be a national scandal this year?!! If your kids are in Y6, I am so so sorry. Sorry that they have been set up to fail, sorry that their lovely rich curriculum will be abandoned for a diet of SATS drilling and sorry that concerns for children's mental health have gone through the roof. This is happening right now people - in your kids' schools. AIBU to think something just has to give?!!!https://m.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tes.com%2Fnews%2Fschool-news%2Fbreaking-views%2Fdear-nicky-morgan-a-talented-and-demand-teacher-has-resigned-she&sid=0&appid=966242223397117&referrer=sociallplugin&rdr

There will never be a situation where children have to pass a year before moving on in this country. It is far too expensive.

There will never be a situation where the government leaves teachers and schools alone. They don't trust teachers to do a good job without endlessly micromanaging and scrutinising and judging them.

The government won't even admit there is a teacher recruitment and retention crisis, when the objective figures are printed out in black and white in front of them. They are hardly likely to listen to the perspectives of teachers and parents and children, are they?

There is such an obvious connection between the rise of mental health disorders and the endless examination and scrutiny of "levels/grades" in this country, I'm surprised that this money-grabbing government hasn't worked out that they will save on mental health treatment and loss of teachers if they stopped poking their noses in and changing stuff the whole damn time.

Let's make MPs sit the KS2 test - all of them. Then let's rank them and humiliate them.

Well this thread has certainly raised a heated debate!!

Just wanted to point out to the couple of posters who say that their children have never been stressed out by SATS before so it's the schools fault if they are stressing their children.

My school is very supportive, children have always been given lots of help & support if and when they needed it and revision or practice tests kept to a minimum. Mixing this in with a broad and balanced curriculum has historically produced happy, confident kids who did well in SATS. We also realise that SATS is what it is - certainly not the be all and end all and other ways of assessing children's progress are far more important. This year is totally different...I think most schools are battening down the hatches and their kids will be getting nothing but SATS for the next few months. Writing in particular is going to be hideous - as I've previously said, bringing out the example material last week has created panic stations in schools. The bar hasn't just been raised in writing, it's gone into the stratosphere. Reminds me of the old level 6 reading that only 0.2% nationally could pass because it was far too difficult and age inappropriate for what most 10/11 year olds can do. And before I get lots of people saying their kids got L6 - well that really is fantastic but most kids haven't a hope in hell and that isn't far off where we expect them to be performing this year (in fact my two L6 writers from last year would prob struggle to get Expected on this new criteria..!!!! Madness..)

iguana I love that idea of the MPs passing the end of year 6 test!! Maybe our education minister too and DC as they are both so keen with it?

Yes. All of them. In a big draughty hall.

Education secretaries should have worked full time in a state school primary or comp for 10 years.

Health secretaries should have worked as doctors full time for the NHS for 10 years too.

Let's make MPs sit the KS2 test - all of them. Then let's rank them and humiliate them.

I really like this idea!

I've been contacted by the NUT this morning - they want Y2 and Y6 teachers' views on assessment before they consult with the NAHT later this week.

Watch this space!

Do Ofqual have anything to do with primary assessments?

When the new maths GCSE sample assessment materials were published by the exam boards last year there was a big fuss and Ofqual stepped in. The sample assessment materials were then sat by a group of Y11s and it was found that the pass mark would be ridiculously low and so the assessment materials were scrapped and exam boards were told to make them easier.

It makes me bloody furious that the government is sweeping in these changes without actually trying them out on children first to see if they are reasonable, and without giving enough time for the changes to be embedded in the curriculum before assessing the kids against them. It's madness and only proves that education should be taken out of control of the government.

Feenie the NUT (any teaching union in fact) has about as much teeth in decision-making (or even influence) as a dead worm. We don't need to watch this space to know what will happen. I can tell you

99.999% of all teachers will say it's a load of crap.

the education secretary will announce she has listened to the concerns and is happy to discuss them.

The outcome will be no change at all, or one pifflingly minor change of no consequence. "The government has listened to the teaching Unions and their concerns and has decided that subordinate clauses will now be taught in year 2 rather than reception".

It's madness and only proves that education should be taken out of control of the government.

Yes absolutely.

Not true - together with the NAHT we destroyed the 2010 league tables.

Did the SATs boycott actually change anything? I don't really know what it was about.

I do know that Y11 just gone were the year of the SATs boycott and as a result their FFT predicted grades were all over the place. I had kids in my set 1 with FFT targets of a C, so when they got an A*/A my value-added was awesome. Not so good for teachers of lower sets though who had C grade kids with A grade targets.

Yes, the writing test, which was always a disgrace, was removed as a direct result of the boycott.

But just the writing test is a nothing really isn't it, in the grand scheme of things.

Ha, ask any primary school teacher that question - would they have preferred, over the last five years, their writing to have been assessed over many pieces as a teacher assessment, or as a one off test like it was pre-2010?

It was worth it just for the time given back to me in the place of applying for re-marks, every single bloody year.

It's a tiny step in the right direction but I don't think our unions are anything like as strong as they should be. Education has been decimated. The profession is haemorrhaging. Changes are made more often than Ms Morgan changes her knickers. If the unions were working for us then we wouldn't be in this position. As it is, most people I talk to are only in a union in case of a false allegation made by a child/parent. We pay in £100s every year. We would be better off keeping our money and paying a solicitor to defend us if it came to that, in my opinion.

You can see all the changes that the government are making slowly hitting the public consciousness. Scrapping levels leading to reports that no one understands. New GCSEs that no one can predict grades for. KS2 tests that are being passed around Facebook because they're that ridiculous.
Just wait until kids start failing. All teachers will be able to say is "we tried to warn you".

The problem is the old levels had a massive flaw that relates back to teachers point about teaching new stuff on top of old stuff that hasn't been full understood. The mistake wasn't scrapping them, it was not replacing them or giving any guidance on how best to replace them.

That might have been a debate worth having. Instead, schools and LAs seem to have replaced them with something that looks similar to levels, but with different labels.

Oh don't get me wrong, levels were crap, and gave an illusion of progress that parents thought was actually meaningful when it wasn't. Levels were awful, except I think when used for their original purpose which was to give an indicator of progress between key stages.

However, not replacing them but also saying that schools still had to report on the progress of students over time while not giving them the tools to do this was utter stupidity. Wtf did they think would happen?

"Reminds me of the old level 6 reading that only 0.2% nationally could pass because it was far too difficult and age inappropriate for what most 10/11 year olds can do"

And yet schools - who IME all thought that it was essentially 'correct' that almost no 10 / 11 year olds were mature enough to interpret texts appropriate for a 14 year old at the level expected of a 14 year old - felt forced to spend quite a lot of time teaching their able readers towards this test?

Why? Because to achieve a high Oftsed rating, children must make 'above expected progress'. The ONLY way a child who achieved level 3 in Year 2 could show above expected progress was to get a Level 6, as Level 5 was expected. So schools with a high proportion of Year 2 children achieving Level 3s HAD to try to get children through this test if they possibly could, despite their own views on the matter....

Speaking from lived experience as a parent of a DD, who passed the L6 reading paper last year (from a state primary school in a 'deprived' area), I don't think 'the L6 paper' was the villain of the piece, per se. I would say the L3-5 reading paper (as a springboard?), in comparison to the jump from L3-5 maths and SPaG papers, was the true stinker!
Also, I do feel the L6 reading paper, whilst heavy in interpretation and inference, was weighted toward the written responses to the questions posed.

I always find it fascinating that the only Education Secretary in recent years who actually had experience in teaching resigned stating she wasn't up to the job (Estelle Morris) since then we've been subjected to ministers trying to make their mark by fiddling with a system that is never given time to implement anything before the next one steps in and changes everything again.

I agree Suffolk. The only one who was up to the job felt she couldn't have enough influence. And yet all the following ones are arrogant enough to believe they are great, presumably.

It was definitely a missed opportunity, noble. And incredibly stupid of the government.

I'm not sure what a better system would look like though. I think the new writing exemplification was probably an attempt to deal with the issue, but clearly that's not workable either.

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/nut-calls-sats-be-suspended-after-widespread-criticism-new-assessment

All the teaching unions are expected to meet on Thursday to discuss a joint response.

Blimey!