I'm not alone am I? How can I help my stressed, overtested Y6 dd to cope with the relentless pressure that comes from the school. Grrrrrr

[northender]

Apologies in advance for the long post.
Just that really. I'm not alone am I? Ds did Y6 3 years ago at the same school and it just bears no resemblance to what is going on this year as a result of the new testing system.
She is bright and in the top set for most things but that, apparently, is not enough. Already this school year they have been tested several times in each subject, in the hall, under exam conditions. Today they got results of an arithmetic test. Dd got 80% which she was pleased with but was then told she had to resit it today and if she didn't achieve 88% then she would have to do another test type exercise for homework. She missed history this afternoon as a result, to do the resit. Last half term she missed 2 sessions of history/geography to try to improve her reading comprehension skills.
Dd takes everything to heart and has taken a couple of hours to calm down tonight. She was upset and angry.This is not an isolated incident and although I recognise that dd's temperament does not help her, I can't see how this level of pressure is helpful in the long run. She seems like such a tortured soul at times and I feel pretty helpless. We have discussed with school how much to heart she takes things but I'm not sure they really get it as her teacher said to her today "Don't go home worrying about it"
We do lots of hopefully distracting stuff with her at home which she loves. She helps me with cooking & baking, is helping dh research my family history and does sewing & all sorts of crafty things with my mum. These things aren't forced on her but things she loves to do. In terms of formal extra curricular stuff she does drama and music both of which she loves.
I genuinely don't feel that going into school again will help, but as much as we say to her that it's not all about results, the school say the complete opposite.

If you've got to the end of my post then thank you

[kesstrel]

But surely coursework is even easier to cheat on than controlled assessments. I don't like exams GCSEs, but the scale of cheating that is possible in exams is far smaller.

[LuluJakey1]

And this is why we should be fighting any system that compounds the social class disadvantage that already exists in every profession.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3309199/The-class-ceiling-Workers-privileged-backgrounds-earn-18-000-humbler-starts-life.html

However, that would not suit this government- they approve of social disadvantage; it is ingrained in them.

[mrz]

I'm old I did O levels and it was all exams

[mrz]

I worked with a teacher who wrote all of her son's course work and would probably have taken his exams if she could.

[kesstrel]

This is an interesting and nuanced article on the issue of criterion-based vs norm-based exams:

"However, criterion-referencing has not proved as successful as this would suggest. The problem, as Tim Oates notes in what I think is the crucial part of his article, is that it is not as easy to create the absolute criteria or standards as we think it is. The first issue is the slippery nature of standards. Even a well-crafted statement of what you need to get an A grade can be loaded with subjectivity – even in subjects such as science. It’s genuinely hard to know how difficult a specific exam is."

thewingtoheaven.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/norm-referencing-and-criterion-referencing/

[TaupeShimmery]

I would have thought that course work is potentially unfair for a several reasons - it's much easier to cheat if work is taken out of school to complete. In school it's also possible for a teacher to 'help' certain children more than is strictly allowed.

Also, as with homework, some kids will have a lot more parental help and support than others - even if this doesn't amount to the parent actually doing work for the child, the child's results will be advantaged if a parent is keeping tabs on deadlines and making the child sit down and work.

[TaupeShimmery]

But there isn't a perfect system, some kids respond much better to the deadline pressure of exams than others.

However OP, your school does sound very over the top. I did O levels too, but I don't remember any testing pressure at primary at all.

[bearleftmonkeyright]

Any child whose parents are supportive will do well. I think the vast majority of us know that writing your kids course work is not in their best interests and I certainly wouldn't do it. I would like to see a mixture of both course work and exam based assessment which tests a mixture of abilities and gives children a chance to excel in at least one area. It is becoming increasingly clear to me that my DD will struggle to get a 5 in GCSe. She is on flight path 4 which indicates her expected GCSe grade. She is in year 9. I'm really worried. She's aa great girl, capable and intelligent, an army cadet and a member of an am dram group. I want her to have a chance at success. It worries me greatly.

[LuluJakey1]

I know of teachers whose own children bring work home and they help them with it to the extent an ordinary parent would be unlikley to be able to help.

I also know of 3 exams officers over the years who have advantaged children by cheating with exams conditions.

My best friend's son goes to a high achieving school in Northumberland and he is given his controlled assessments to take home and work on- they are re-done if he does not get a high enough grade.

Any examination system is open to mis-use.

However, if you build the system and assessment on allowing children to do their best and rewarding the right things- hard work, skill development, care, effort, quality, it all becomes a) A more real assessment of standards reached b) A more real assessment of capability and c) Less discrimnatory and less open to manipulation.

Do you really think if children completed 6 pieces of 1500 words each, that a school is going to write 6 pieces for 200 children in Year 11? It is a ridiculous idea. Who do you think can write 1200 x1500 word pieces of extended writing, all different, targeted to the right standard and believeable as coming from a 15 year old?

[imjustahead]

I really feel for her. I am sitting here with a 13 yr old dd who is bright, interested in life and totally worn out by school.

So much so that she has now been taken out of mainstream. This is the impact that this kind of testing and pressure can have on some children.

[Autumnsky]

I can't understand why a few test would make a year 6 children so stress. Can't OP talk to DD, to help her understand that test is just a tool to help her improving, no need to be stress about it.

Some people think test don't help anything. I have different opinions. DS1 is in a selective independant school. They have test all the time. When the teacher finish a section, the teacher would give a little test for the knowledge just covered. It's not a big thing, it just help you understand what you have mastered, what you haven't.

Like OP's daughter, if she get 80%, then why she lost the other 20%, is it due to careless? Then she learn to check her answer, look at the question more carefully.These are good attitude which she will need in later study , even in her later work. Is it something she didn't understand? Then she need to spend time to get it. The things taught in school are important, especially at Primary school level, it is the foundation for further study. For able student, they would need a solid foundation for further study. Even for the really not academic student, these skills are the essential skills for their later work and life.

[TeddTess]

have you read the thread autumnsky?
it is the school/teachers behaviour, not the dd getting overly stressed by a test. i don't think any 10-11 year old would cope with what she's been put through.

[Sunnyminimalist2]

Autumn sky - if only they were simple stress free end of unit tests. Schools often put an unhealthy pressurised emphasis on year 6 sats because each school has to show that a each child has moved up x many levels. It's not about children gaining a good all round education, it's about cramming the kids intensely so that the school can jump through hoops.

[kesstrel]

Of course no one would be writing all the coursework for all year 11 pupils. But pieces can be substantially "improved" by parent, teacher or tutor input, just as is the case now for coursework when cheating takes place. It is pretty obvious that middle class children with educated parents would be the ones most likely to benefit from this.

There was an article recently in The Guardian Secret Teacher slot about cheating on coursework, and lots of teachers posted comments underneath. Half of them were outraged at the very suggestion that such a thing could ever take place, and the other half admitted that it did take place in their own school!

What the best answer would be I honestly don't know. Some countries have a system where teachers simply grade students on their homework, tests and participation in class, and the grades are averaged together at the end of secondary. But that has its own problems, because apparently studies have shown that teacher assessment is on average more biased and less fair that standardised assessment. It would certainly save us a lot of money on exams, though!

[Autumnsky]

I saw one post earlier say "test does nothing", and I think test help students find the area to be improved. That's my post about.

As for OP, I do think she need to help DD to try to take it easy to the test. Parents attitude can affect DC. If you think these test are not fair, stress, unnecessary, DC will take it that way.

I remember one of my friends in secondary school, whose normal study grades were similar to mine, but she can't take the pressure of the formal test, eventually she took an unconditional offer to a lower rank University instead of taking the University entry test.

[christinarossetti]

I'm a parent not a teacher and find the current state of state education beyond depressing. Knowing that it's only going to get worse when huge budget cuts are imposed fills me with dread.