The SATS con and our education system

[Blue Maverick]

Currently my 11 year old is coming upto her SATS test, it’s a fucking nightmare putting these kids under this pressure at that age, all to benefit the school and not the kids. Year 6 across the country have been identified as been low on spelling and grammar, this is all down to the COVID years, when they should have been learning Phonics etc. This has impacted on them in a big way (my daughter in particular really struggles). Now the schools should have realised this a few years ago, but no instead they persisted in teaching them fucking French and other subjects which are not a priority.
I feel the education system has fundamentally failed this group of kids, now some might say these other subjects are important for a well rounded education, well if that’s the case why have all these subjects been effectively dumped since Jan to enable these kids to pass the SATS so the school looks good? I went to a parents evening and asked why kids where been taught a lot of stuff in English, that they will probably never use in life, the teacher said they won’t even use them in secondary education it’s all for SATS!
I know the government set the curriculum and it’s a long time since I was at school but the stuff they are cramming in their heads as such and early age and the pressure they are under is ridiculous. I’ve told my daughter not to worry one jot, try her best that’s it, I don’t want her panicking or getting upset, which she does sometimes. Anyway rant over.

 

[yeseye]

They’re teaching the kids much worse stuff across the pond by all accounts!

 

[I'm With Stupid]

Well she won't be able to spell, but at least she'll know what a fronted adverbial is. I can't tell you how often that's useful in later life.

Seriously though you're right. So much of a teacher's job nowadays seems to be more about collecting data for the government rather than actually teaching anything.

 

[Damocles]

Currently my 11 year old is coming upto her SATS test, it’s a fucking nightmare putting these kids under this pressure at that age, all to benefit the school and not the kids. Year 6 across the country have been identified as been low on spelling and grammar, this is all down to the COVID years, when they should have been learning Phonics etc. This has impacted on them in a big way (my daughter in particular really struggles). Now the schools should have realised this a few years ago, but no instead they persisted in teaching them fucking French and other subjects which are not a priority.
I feel the education system has fundamentally failed this group of kids, now some might say these other subjects are important for a well rounded education, well if that’s the case why have all these subjects been effectively dumped since Jan to enable these kids to pass the SATS so the school looks good? I went to a parents evening and asked why kids where been taught a lot of stuff in English, that they will probably never use in life, the teacher said they won’t even use them in secondary education it’s all for SATS!
I know the government set the curriculum and it’s a long time since I was at school but the stuff they are cramming in their heads as such and early age and the pressure they are under is ridiculous. I’ve told my daughter not to worry one jot, try her best that’s it, I don’t want her panicking or getting upset, which she does sometimes. Anyway rant over.

Two points to make here.

I won't go around the houses here but one of my dissertations was focused on how people learn and the outcomes people receive. The literature (20 years back) seemed very clear that exams are a stupid way of measuring learning outcomes because there's too many personal factors involved. So called "pop quizzes" and scheduled exams produced wildly different results across all spectrums of people, and the education system has failed generations consistently around this. This was two decades or so back and academia knew that then, why it continues seemed to be political.
When I first moved into game development straight out of University then I saw the same thing again - magic numbers. This number is the goal and everything should be geared towards achieving this number no matter if that metric was stupid because that's how funding or success was measured. The educational system has many different funding formulae but the results based one is one of the stupidest - no different from football really, if a person is paid based entirely on how many goals they score then they aren't going to pass any more.

Second was a Youtube video from the hilariously named Professor Moriarty, a physics undergrad lecturer at the University of Nottingham. In this video, him and his colleagues compared A level papers from the 1980s compared to the 2010s and the differences were stark. There are many people entering undergraduate degrees who are woefully unequipped to take on the material and this doesn't lead to a tightening of the A level stuff but instead a loosening of the undergrad syllabus. A major part of this is the breadth of subjects now taken. It is technically possible to take 13 GCSEs as I understand it and for a teenager whose brain is developing then it's far too much to ask to have any real understanding of the subject knowledge in anything more than a passing manner. This leads to lower A level standards then lower degree level standards.

This isn't to give the old "back in my day" speech. Kids today work as hard if not harder for their education than people have always done, but when we based success around a single digit in terms of entry to higher education, in terms of funding, in terms of social success then we cheapen the process and erase natural talent. If 5 As (as it used to be) are worth less than 13 Bs then something has gone very wrong.

The same process that has been happening for decades at that level seems to now be filtering down to the Covid generation in primary and early secondary education.

 

[Ptolemy's Hairdo]

Classes of 25 have become 40+.

All that counts is the test.

An entire system of education dismantled. As is the case in the NHS, with the removal of trusted GP's who see a patient face to face, the once totally implicit ideas of continuity of care, 'whole patient' approach, gone.

Because they stare at their bank balances so much, they find it easy to believe that people are no more than robots.

Rather than emotional, living creatures with rather a lot more going on under the surface than is ideal.

Same thing in education. It was an investment in the whole person. You lay the foundations and encourage a person to live, exist and thrive. And hope the culture passes on it's wisdom. The nous to give people a shot at a balanced way to think about themselves and the world.

Whatever there is in SAT - there is no wisdom.

I'm afraid culture wars are a terrible answer to this. There is no right answer to the things we sometimes insist on imposing. Kids will get that. Even if we can't explain it. Sometimes we just end up showing that something is wrong. A resistance builds. We aren't smart or clear enough to know what the truth is - we just end up forcing strange things through for the silliest of reasons.

The best goal is different; get the individuals to think well for themselves, to work around the limitations of people inherently and neccessarily disagreeing. To accept the contradictions of the world, and approach it all as a work in progress, a best effort. To know, their view is of value. But to give them the confidence to keep thinking openly about it, privately as well as publicly. So they are not holding on to it desperately. And so they are not prone to end up swayed by small stuff. There is no value in producing fodder for people seeking to exploit easy false answers.

We have to try to give people a sense that something a bit better and more durable is possible, if they keep working for themselves, on their invisible estate, the unwritten unknowable balance sheet, the hidden garden or the secret library of the mind.

It can be measured in outcomes. The outcomes we are failing at now. That's how this happened. We only ever discuss this year's results. And so we totally overlook the obvious truth lives are shaped over decades. Fruition is a whole life deal. So are many many mental health problems. They don't emerge out of the blue and it doesn't happen overnight.

I dunno. I don't expect this to be solved. We will always be distracted by the short term. The latest cycle of results. I don't think that changes.

All I'm saying is, we can do better. IDGAF about train privatisation or many other things. I just hope that there is some move to reverse the trend on class sizes and other short sighted refusals to acknowledge humans for what they are.

 

[Corky]

Not as bad as the 11+ though is it?

 

[blumoonrisen]

I don't remember being stressed about any exams, I think these days its due to pressure from parents and teachers and social media of course.
Kids now can have a shitload of qualifications and still struggle to get a job, so something isn't right.
The ability to read and write and basic maths are the only important things.
No normal person needs to know algebra, logarithms and shit, no idea if that's even a thing now.

 

[Gaylord du Bois]

Not as bad as the 11+ though is it?

Those were the days. Even if you passed it you weren't guaranteed to be accepted into grammar school.

 

[Kompany Car]

No normal person needs to know algebra, logarithms and shit, no idea if that's even a thing now

Really ? I would guarantee there are many more jobs where you need to know about algebra, logs and "shit", than there are where you need to be able to quote and interpret Tennyson or Robert Browning. Or for that matter knowing what an oxbow lake is and its formation or understanding medieval England under Edward I.

There are certainly some GCSEs that seem rather pointless, or at least in my eyes, Drama (its a hobby), Religious Studies (dont get me started), PE (join a sports club and if you want to know about human mechanics do Biology).

To add to those Chemistry, which is taught at GCSE and then when you do it at A Level you might as well forget everything you did previously as it was mostly bobbins.

Then theres the missing useful GCSE. Why not have a GCSE in Construction instead (bit of electrics, plumbing, carpentry, metal bashing etc). Great if you want to get into the trades, but also if you're lucky enough to be able to own a property, which I know is a pipe dream for many, you can do some of the DIY yourself.

 

[Citizen of Legoland]

I loved exams as a kid, the pressure to pass or fail a whole year’s (or 2 years’) work in a 2 hour period. Or 4.5 hours for a Tech Drawing exam.

We’re all different I suppose.

Learning seemed less important when I was a kid and my parents were largely absent from the process, just a “good luck” on the morning of the exam, and “how did it go” afterwards.

I rarely helped my kids with homework and they’re doing alright now. I tried helping my daughter once with Maths and it ended up in an argument, they were teaching them very differently than I was, but the teachers were telling them to ask their parents for help if they got stuck! Lazy fu..