Culture

School tests are bad, m'kay

by Rob Peters | May 12, 2008 at 12:02 pm

1195 views | 2 Recommendations | 4 comments

English officials will review this week whether standardized tests in school are helping any, or whether they might be doing harm.

Ministers will this week be under renewed pressure to scrap school tests for 11-year-olds amid mounting evidence that they undermine education standards and harm children.
Tomorrow, the Commons schools select committee is due to publish a damning report that will call for urgent reform of the system of testing and assessment in England.

Before the report is published the committee chairman, Barry Sheerman, will condemn the whole testing regime on the BBC's Panorama programme, to be aired tonight.

"There's something wrong with the amount of testing and assessment we're doing, the quality of testing and assessment we're doing, and the unseen consequences of that testing for the whole school culture," he told the programme.

"It is still a culture where the success of a child, of a teacher, of a school is linked to testing, testing, testing, that is the problem."

More than a million pupils will sit national curriculum key stage tests (Sats) this week. The government publishes Sats results and the scores determine where schools are ranked in "league tables" produced by the media.

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michelle.sundvick

at 13:46 on May 12th, 2008

Something neeeeds to be done about the culture that school systems have created through continuous testing and a narrow focus on marks. I don't think it's realistic (or would even be beneficial) to get rid of testing altogether; I think it's more important to stress the importance of being a well-rounded student. It shouldn't always be about marks! Students care more about getting an A then the actual learning process. It's easy to memorize and regurgitate info, which is essentially what testing has become. Why not encorporate more projects, case studies, where students can actually apply their knowledge without the intimidating "test" environment. I hope something's done about it sooner rather than later!

akhim

at 19:04 on May 12th, 2008

Note that the teacher misspelled "Exellent Job" [sic]

akhim has contributed a photo to this story.

daywalkr_md

at 06:39 on May 15th, 2008

Testing in any field of study is necessary. But there's more than one way to assess whether an individual has "learned" something from the effort. Learners ought to discover the value of the process of developing mastery of something. The teaching system musn't push students to passing paper exams just for the sake of making the grade or meeting a requirement. As we used to say in medschool, "you can teach a monkey to do an appendectomy..." -- but what's more important is whether it knows when to do the surgery & who to do it on.

daywalkr_md has contributed a photo to this story.

thescribetony

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 08:11 on May 15th, 2008

Rob Peters, I like this story. It's good stuff. In the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />US we over test our kids into a stress induced stupors. This week alone, one of my children has an End of Course Test (required by the state), Final Exam (required by the school), and a another standardized test whose name escapes me at the moment. Next month is SAT testing. We end up teaching the kids to take tests rather then understand the material for the esoteric and practical value.