My daughter is in Y8 and she said a couple of weeks ago that her teachers were setting her up for some tests. I asked if they were important, and she said “if they were important id have thought they would you tell you?”. I agreed.
Her school are about as hard to talk to as a brick wall.
I had an email today saying that starting on Monday, next week, she will be taking EXAMS in English, Maths, Science, French, RE, Geography and History.
They said the purpose of the exams is to “assess learning at the end of the year, identify areas of strength and areas of weakness” and to “prepare for GCSE’s in Y11”.
She leaves this school in July to start high school, and she can’t wait because they’ve been terrible. The maths teacher prints worksheets off Twinkl for them to work on, and never marks them, the kids do. The teacher doesn’t have any grasp on what level the kids are learning at. My daughter says that it’s similar for the rest of her subjects; in French they don’t even need to speak French, just ‘identify’ the words.
I didn’t go to school THAT long ago although I am probably in denial (2004 high school), but we didn’t do tests to see where we were. Our teachers checked our work, saw what level we were working at, and if we were at a lower level we moved to a lower level class to work at that level with the appropriate support (or higher level with no support etc). This gave the basis for what exams we would then sit at GCSE.
Has this changed? I am genuinely curious what the process is around the UK.
(Three tier school system - First / Middle / High )