I’ve got to be honest with you and say that I think the year 7 resits are an absolutely awful idea. In a year of mistakes and confusion on assessment, this one takes the biscuit. So many of the secondary school leaders I’ve been talking to agree, and yet the government has recently reaffirmed its commitment to these additional tests. So much for listening mode.
The proposal is that any student who doesn’t achieve the expected standard at the end of primary will resit their SATs early in their first year of secondary school.
Securing the basics by 11 is essential if children are to access the secondary curriculum, but more high-stakes tests are not the answer; it feels like a policy of “If in doubt, test it”, which is a threadbare approach to raising standards. Additional tests in year 7 will increase teacher workload and drive a wedge between the primary and secondary phases. They will increase the burdens, particularly on those schools serving the most challenging intakes.
The proposal is to hold schools accountable for the results of these tests. It’s unreasonable to think that secondary school teachers can accomplish in one term what primary teachers have seven years to do. Pity more the students, however, who arrive at secondary school labelled as failures.
We’ve been here before. It was called the 11-plus. With the best will in the world, these children are going into a different set or stream in their first term to be prepared for the resits. This means that the year 6 SATs will have similar, though milder and shorter, sorting effects to the old 11-plus.
So we create some of the effects of the 11-plus. Let’s follow the consequences still further. It used to be that year 6 SATs only really mattered to the school – indeed ministers have excused the failures this year by repeatedly referring to this. But this resit dramatically increases their stakes for children and parents.
This means more pressure, more revision, more tutoring. If you feared that some students already had their love of learning coached out of them by relentless drilling in years 5 and 6 then consider what this new environment could bring. “Secondary-ready” means numerate and literate; it also means confident, curious and enquiring.
The government tells us that the pressure is all in the minds of teachers. If only staff didn’t “big things up” and were a little more jolly about these tests on which their jobs and livelihoods depend then children would take them in their stride. But remember this, the Conservative manifesto in May last year described the key stage 2 SATs for the first time as “end-of-primary exams”. There is no doubt where the pressure originates from.
Many secondary leaders are rightly focusing attention on the English Baccalaureate, but these lesser known changes in year 7 will have a major effect on the culture of education. That is almost certainly their intent, of course. They are, however, part of a massive, late-notice and poorly planned overhaul of assessment which is replacing clarity with turmoil, focus with panic, and learning with exam prep.
I have no problem with tests. They are a vital tool in the armoury of teachers and offer benefits ranging from accurate diagnosis to the improvement of retention of knowledge. Many secondaries already test all their pupils on entry to help target their teaching.
It is what you do with tests that matters. Using the blunt statistics produced by tests in high-stakes accountability systems, with dire consequences for teachers and schools, distorts the use of tests. Perhaps the greatest sin is that it erodes the educational value of tests as the data becomes increasingly meaningless – telling us less and less about the reality of the learning they are supposed to represent. In this climate, high test scores demonstrate mostly that students are good at passing tests.
We can’t keep tacking on new tests every time we have a slow news day. The testing regime from start to finish is a mess of patch ups, interim solutions and gimmicks. We need a coherent vision from the youngest to the oldest students, setting out what assessments are for and how their results are to be used.
- Russell Hobby is general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers. Visit www.naht.org.uk