Read more: Schools should offer two maths GCSEs—one academic, one practical
Yesterday, thousands of parents across the country pulled their seven year olds out of school in protest at the “stress” experienced in the run up to SATs: Standard Assessment Tests that all pupils in Year Two (and Year Six) sit. The parents—who took part in the protest as part of the “Let Our Kids be Kids” campaign—are adamant that it is the SATs themselves that are to blame.
Yet the pressure that exams themselves place on students tends to relate to the direct consequences of failure. Fail your GCSEs or A-levels and you won’t get into university. Fail your university finals paper and you won’t get a good job. SATs have no such direct consequences.
Exam stress at A-level or university is an understandable product of believing that your future hinges on the result of the paper you are about to sit. Failure has immediate and understandable consequences for your ambitions and future earnings.
Aged seven, however, your life perspective is wholly different. I live with a seven year old. His life agenda is ice cream after dinner, an extra ten minutes of the video game Minecraft, and exploring ever more creative ways to push back bedtime. His life ambition is to go to America on holiday. At this age, “exam stress” is entirely the creation of parents—or worse, schools themselves.
Parents understandably want their children to do well, but there is a fine line between putting pressure on your children to work hard, and putting pressure on them to achieve a grade beyond their capability. The motto was simple in our house. “As long as you can look me in the eye,” my mother would say, “and tell me you did your best, I will be proud.” If there is stress then it is the fault of parents in general—not the exams themselves. Helping your child to do their best, not be the best, is the crucial distinction in reducing the stress of exams.
The irony is that this is precisely what SATs are designed to help parents and schools do. That SATs are viewed as “exams” like GCSEs or A-levels is wrong. SATs give you no formal qualification. Progression through education is not contingent on a pass mark. They have absolutely no relevance beyond the snapshot in time they represent. The importance placed on SATs scores is not the invention of the nation’s seven year olds, but of schools and parents, an importance and pressure that is then picked up by the children themselves.
Schools should know better: worry less about how results reflect on the school, and more about what they are saying about the child. SATs are merely designed to act as a marker for a child’s progress, not against their friends, but nationally. If a child does “badly” in their SATs, it should not be viewed as a failure, but as an indication that that child needs help. Only so much can be learned from the school gates: wider benchmarks are needed. SATs are this benchmark.
This is why the boycott is so damaging. No parent would remove their 16 year old from school to protest the stress of GCSEs. GCSEs are seen to be far too important. They are seen to matter for life chances. However, the evidence says the opposite.
Research by Save the Children suggests that more than a fifth of UK children have already fallen behind permanently behind by the age of seven, and that being behind in reading, writing, and arithmetic at this age can prejudice future earnings, health, and opportunities. In short, life chances are not determined by GSCE or A-level results. They are set much earlier.
SATs, are absolutely vital indicators of whether a child is falling behind. Testing at the age of seven gives parents and schools a chance to get it right—an opportunity to ensure that child is not permanently disadvantaged. This makes it sound as though SATs have the potential to be incredibly stressful after all. But as I've said, children have a different perspective to adults. Plus, SATs should be viewed as a marker, not an exam.
In protesting them, parents risk extinguishing a vital warning light that could stop their child experiencing a lifetime of disadvantage. This is particularly relevant for kids who are already disadvantaged socio-economically. 80 per cent of the difference in GCSE results between rich and poor children is determined by the age of seven.
I am all for letting “children be children,” for teaching in a way that helps them create and flourish, but not at the expense of the lifetime of disadvantage that follows from getting it wrong at the start.
Now read: Why are we so bad at maths?
Yesterday, thousands of parents across the country pulled their seven year olds out of school in protest at the “stress” experienced in the run up to SATs: Standard Assessment Tests that all pupils in Year Two (and Year Six) sit. The parents—who took part in the protest as part of the “Let Our Kids be Kids” campaign—are adamant that it is the SATs themselves that are to blame.
Yet the pressure that exams themselves place on students tends to relate to the direct consequences of failure. Fail your GCSEs or A-levels and you won’t get into university. Fail your university finals paper and you won’t get a good job. SATs have no such direct consequences.
Exam stress at A-level or university is an understandable product of believing that your future hinges on the result of the paper you are about to sit. Failure has immediate and understandable consequences for your ambitions and future earnings.
Aged seven, however, your life perspective is wholly different. I live with a seven year old. His life agenda is ice cream after dinner, an extra ten minutes of the video game Minecraft, and exploring ever more creative ways to push back bedtime. His life ambition is to go to America on holiday. At this age, “exam stress” is entirely the creation of parents—or worse, schools themselves.
Parents understandably want their children to do well, but there is a fine line between putting pressure on your children to work hard, and putting pressure on them to achieve a grade beyond their capability. The motto was simple in our house. “As long as you can look me in the eye,” my mother would say, “and tell me you did your best, I will be proud.” If there is stress then it is the fault of parents in general—not the exams themselves. Helping your child to do their best, not be the best, is the crucial distinction in reducing the stress of exams.
The irony is that this is precisely what SATs are designed to help parents and schools do. That SATs are viewed as “exams” like GCSEs or A-levels is wrong. SATs give you no formal qualification. Progression through education is not contingent on a pass mark. They have absolutely no relevance beyond the snapshot in time they represent. The importance placed on SATs scores is not the invention of the nation’s seven year olds, but of schools and parents, an importance and pressure that is then picked up by the children themselves.
Schools should know better: worry less about how results reflect on the school, and more about what they are saying about the child. SATs are merely designed to act as a marker for a child’s progress, not against their friends, but nationally. If a child does “badly” in their SATs, it should not be viewed as a failure, but as an indication that that child needs help. Only so much can be learned from the school gates: wider benchmarks are needed. SATs are this benchmark.
This is why the boycott is so damaging. No parent would remove their 16 year old from school to protest the stress of GCSEs. GCSEs are seen to be far too important. They are seen to matter for life chances. However, the evidence says the opposite.
Research by Save the Children suggests that more than a fifth of UK children have already fallen behind permanently behind by the age of seven, and that being behind in reading, writing, and arithmetic at this age can prejudice future earnings, health, and opportunities. In short, life chances are not determined by GSCE or A-level results. They are set much earlier.
SATs, are absolutely vital indicators of whether a child is falling behind. Testing at the age of seven gives parents and schools a chance to get it right—an opportunity to ensure that child is not permanently disadvantaged. This makes it sound as though SATs have the potential to be incredibly stressful after all. But as I've said, children have a different perspective to adults. Plus, SATs should be viewed as a marker, not an exam.
In protesting them, parents risk extinguishing a vital warning light that could stop their child experiencing a lifetime of disadvantage. This is particularly relevant for kids who are already disadvantaged socio-economically. 80 per cent of the difference in GCSE results between rich and poor children is determined by the age of seven.
I am all for letting “children be children,” for teaching in a way that helps them create and flourish, but not at the expense of the lifetime of disadvantage that follows from getting it wrong at the start.
Now read: Why are we so bad at maths?
