Are exams and tests doing more harm than good?

[learnandsay]

The report below claims that some (unnamed) teachers admitted to doing their children's homework for them. How do we know that these teachers really exist? The report doesn't say how many teachers are presumed to be doing their children's homework. It might only be the two cited teachers in the whole of the UK. There might be some bad teachers who find doing their children's homework is easier than teaching a class. That wouldn't tell us anything about how beneficial or harmful our exams and tests are.

Is this report simply stirring the pot and not telling us anything helpful at all?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-17564311

I read the report earlier this morning and I too was amazed at the crappy reporting. The article read like something that might be lifted from some blog as opposed to the writings of an impartial professional journalist.

Do these kind of teachers exist? Of course they do in the same way that exceptional ones exist and average ones exist. I think that it is just the journalist advancing his/her own view.

As for whether exams and tests are doing more harm than good, that depends on the children. DCs are at academic indies where for each subject they have an End Of Term test. This is good as far as my DCs are concerned. It helps identify areas where they haven't fully undertood the material.

However, if the school/class isn't particularly academic then prepping for exams and taking exams are taking time and resources that would be better spent actually teaching and learning.

Hi learnandsay:

Here's the link to original ATL survey results: www.atl.org.uk/media-office/media-archive/staff-pupils-mounting-exm-pressure.asp

Agreed - this is rather sloppy reporting by BBC (perhaps the cuts to keep the license fee down are hitting?). Personally would have liked comment from Department for Education, Ofsted and possibly various organisations or researchers regarding teaching to testing culture/ league table pressures for schools.

What I will say is that I was absolutely horrified to learn from a secondary teacher that the marking in English isn't about the coherence of argument or the logical presentation of information - but that scoring is based on the presence of key facts. So you can write ungrammatical, poorly spelled and disorganized essays on a topic as long as the key list of facts is there.

This explains a lot about this year's crop of first year undergraduates and their response to getting a low mark on their first essays - which left us oldies very confused indeed.