Testing for primary pupils at 5 and ranking at 11 - what do you think?

[SarahMumsnet]

The Deputy PM Nick Clegg has today unveiled a set of proposals around testing for primary school children.

Under the proposals, pupils aged 11 - who are already tested under the SATs - will be divided by their results into "ability bands" of 10%, and that information will be shared with parents, so that they can see how their children rank nationally.

Clegg also announced that he'll be launching a consultation on whether or not to bring in a "baseline" test at the start of the Reception year in order to establish where children are, and whether they need additional support.

However, teachers' unions have already raised objections to the proposals, with the leader of the National Association of Head Teachers, Russell Hobby, saying that "The vast majority of teachers are unhappy with the need to rank students."

What do you reckon? Does more testing - and more grading around the results - benefit children (and schools)? Or do we risk a return to the days of labelling children as successes and failures before they've hit their teens?

This is what ALL the research shows we should be doing with primary education. I personally will consider all testing below the age of 14 to be completely irrelevant and often damaging. DH was a very late developer academically and so was I, yet we both ended up with the best degrees possible in our respective professions. At age 5 I was mostly pretending to be a horse and at age 11 I think I was still mostly pretending to be a horse. I didn't know any times tables and couldn't do long or short multiplication when I went to secondary school. DH couldn't read at 7.5. Children need a childhood. They will study when they are ready, especially if inspired by good and passionate teachers. Teachers can't be passionate and iconoclastic as some of mine were if they are constantly processing performance data

prettybird

This is not going to do anything to improve standards, teachers will simply teach to the test to get borderline children up into the next 10% cohort. It's typical of this government that they don't see this and that they are just replacing one problem with a slightly different one.

And they keep saying how much they admire the education system in Finland - how about blinking emulating it then???

I worry about the millions of pounds that will be wasted spent replacing SIMs.

I worry about the evangelical belief that the poor breed less able children, and the huge amounts of money being spent on the pupil premium.

I worry about the lowest 10% of children deemed to be 'secondary ready'.

I worry about schools being able to set their own assessment criteria leading to a total breakdown of the whole educational system.

I worry about keen young teachers being demoralised and leaving the profession because they don't want to lead massive initiatives, and will never gain UPS.

I worry about teachers coming up to retirement who have legitimately reached UPS through performance, and don't want to take on massive workloads this late in their careers OR take the option to drop to M6.

And I worry about lots more than this...

How I worry.

Bastards.

What can we DO about it?

bloody mental, kids aren't machines. There are peaks & troughs in their life & in their learning.
How demotivating to be assessed & pigeonholed at such a young age.
There is enough testing already ffs, LEAVE OUR KIDS ALONE!

I would prefer assuming any kind of testing required in any way that maybe teachers were themselves tested performance wise by practical tests (exams/visual performance/) than any kind of additional tests being introduced for kids.

Kids seem to be being used as indicators of teacher performance. I just don't think that's worthwhile. Or if so are we going to end up paying performance bonus/salaries based on 28 out of 30 kids hitting band A etc?

There's just better ways to assess children's understanding and better ways of assessing teacher suitability and ability than these suggested methods.

I recently sat in a meeting about SATS, not one person in the room, LEA, Teachers, parent had any belief in the value of SATS, the benefit of them or even the relevance of the data they produce.
But we all wasted an hour of our life playing the game, its SHIT!

Teaching shouldn't be measured by private company style methods and I think this banding will move things that way/is the idea.

Why not invest all the money spent in the endless testing & bollocks that goes along with it & spend it on schools, teachers, training & the kids.

How about we test these bloody politicians on their performances? One indicator would be how many promises they've broken.

You cannot meaningfully test five year olds, as children at that age all develop at very different rates. Remember that in many other countries, including Finland which tops the world education rankings, children don't even start formal education and learning to read until they are 7 years' old. As for ranking 11 year olds, this was a common practice in primary schools up to the 1950s, when it was rightly discontinued. Children already have a sense of where they are in the academic pecking order without the humiliation of being formally told. And knowing that you are top dog in your primary school becomes totally meaningless when a child starts secondary and becomes a small fish in a big pond. Yet another pointless, headline grabbing policy from Gove and his mates.

I'm an former teacher currently 12 weeks pregnant with DC1.

As someone who seen the system from inside the classroom, I can categorically say that no child of mine will ever sit a SATS exam. I will remove them from school the week of the tests. SATS have nothing to do with quality education and everything to do with the Government trying to create positive spin and prove how 'brilliantly' they are doing. It's bollocks.

feedmewotsits, I completely agree. My eldest did sit the SATS, It didn't bother him, caused him no stress, he is very able & quite likes a test.
My youngest is disabled has a statement & testing causes him a great deal of anxiety, his school are still keen to support him through tests, I think he may have a horrid bug that week.

It will be useful, I think, to understand where a child is at Reception to see if any additional help is needed and comparing the result with year 6 will help with working out value added (which is perhaps why some are opposed?). Would v much like to see this as a national test for all, including children in private schools. But I realise I am v much in the minority.

I will not be taking my child to school on the day of SATs - won't be party to this hideous labelling exercise. All he needs to know is what he is doing well and what he needs to do to improve. Not some rank ordering. It's a disgrace and I'd encourage all parents to boycott the test. That'll confound 'em! (And secondaries don't trust SAts data anyway - they do their own baseline tests).

Very much agree with UPTOAPOINT

If you take them out for the week though, they only do it when they go back, apparently. I heard some schools send EWO round to check dc are ill.
It is wrong that schools and teachers have the brunt of the responsibility where Ofsted are concerned if dc miss SATS.
I don't blame parents though, my dd won't be doing them either.
I think with the mess Gove is making of the education system, children as well as teachers will be leaving in their droves. There are many sahps who could manage H.ed quite easily.

Even the whiff of an organised parent SATs boycott would cause a media storm. Would be worth trying I think.

1. Ranking pupils at 11 is a terrible idea and I agree with all those who say we should boycott the tests.
2. The only people who will appreciate this are those parents whose children are in the top 10%. For those in the bottom 50% it is cruel, pointless, demoralising and and demotivating.
3. There is already a massive amount of information and hoops to jump for schools to track progress - extend this to parents and even if the school did a fantastic job in supporting their child, 90% are guaranteed to feel cheated, unhappy or resentful and yet have no control over the situation (a bit like forced academies against the wishes of parents...).
4. It will accelerate the expansion of the unregulated tutoring industry.
5. It discriminates against state school pupils - even those hothoused in prep schools are only compared against their classmates not the whole ruddy country.
6. Testing at 5 is pointless and stressful and the margin for error is enormous.
7. The LibDems are a bunch of elitist hypocrites for supporting a norm-referenced system of testing while claiming to support comprehensive 'inclusive' schooling. It is a short step from here to reintroduction of grammars and, to fit in with school admissions, bringing in testing in the Christmas term (a 10+). Again, great for the top 10% but shite for the rest.

I really don't like it, was glad to figure out that only my youngest would be affected. He's rather ordinary but I don't like it being made an issue of, which is how I would feel about it if his results were expressed as a percentile. Just Not Helpful.

Re: tests etc: whether we like it or not our children will be judged & benchmarked by tests/exams whether it's at 11, 16 or 18. I don't know about most children but mine are completely freaked out by tests. They worry that their talent is being judged, they worry they will fall short, they stress and usually falter and stumble when they find a question they can't do rather than ignoring it and moving on to the next.

I've worked in Preps and know many well. In contrast when it comes to tests, it's absolute water off a ducks back. It's no big deal, the children know what to do when stumped by a question, it's cool and tests happen thrice weekly in some cases.

Controversially I think children should be exposed to more testing because so many of them are at a disadvantage and in my experience it takes YEARS to get that 'water of duck's back' attitude ingrained which is second nature to the most fortunate and privileged.

So if we want them to understand that it isn't a good idea to spend far too long on one question at GCSE and not have a melt down, heart attack & under performing in public exams I think there's a place for making increased testing part of the routine. The caveat being it's no big deal and you will only get better if you try whatever your starting point.

Terrible idea and I would also boycott

Terrible idea and I would also boycott

Kids in state primary are tested quite a bit, too, ime. At least once a term from end of y2. Certainly the y6 SATs were just more of the same in my mind.
But that doesn't mean I want a national ranking system, either.