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Latest Blog Posts
- What curriculum do young people need? July 23, 2020
- School reopening? top scientists say not yet May 25, 2020
- Sending England back to work and back to school? May 11, 2020
- Too early to reopen schools : look at Europe April 30, 2020
- Ofsted : unreliable, destructive, beyond repair December 5, 2019
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Tag Archives: testing
Life after SATs – a world to win
It is hardly surprising that the prospect of ending SATs has worried some parents and teachers. After all, younger teachers, and most parents, have always lived under their shadow. SATs are part of the landscape. It’s hard to imagine what … Continue reading
Posted in Accountability, Uncategorized
Tagged accountability pressures, assessment alternatives, testing
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Primary school tests and children’s mental health
One study after another has shown the damage being caused by SATs to children’s mental health. In a survey by the ATL (now part of the National Education Union) in 2016, 89% thought that testing and exams were the biggest cause … Continue reading
Posted in Accountability, Uncategorized
Tagged accountability pressures, Ofsted, politicians, testing
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Stop these tests, protect the children
Following Michael Gove’s revision of the National Curriculum, the Government deliberately set out to make tests harder. The result was predictable. In their first year, the new KS2 SATs failed half of England’s children in at least one subject (Reading, … Continue reading
Posted in Accountability
Tagged accountability pressures, assessment alternatives, testing
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Without SATs the sky won’t fall in!
The National Education Union’s first conference in April voted to ballot on boycotting SATs. The next day, Jeremy Corbyn promised that a future Labour government would abolish them along with the proposed baseline test. This has caused excitement but also … Continue reading
Demoralisation and failure: what are we doing to children?
In the open letter which a hundred education professors and lecturers wrote to Michael Gove in 2013, and which hit the front pages of national newspapers, the government was clearly warned about what the new curriculum would do. The lists … Continue reading
Posted in Accountability, Uncategorized
Tagged accountability pressures, disadvantage, National Curriculum, testing
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Test scores and poverty 2: parents’ education
The mountains of data which overwhelm schools are next to useless, because the categories they use don’t measure up to reality. A major reason is that the categories ‘Free School Meals’ and ‘disadvantaged’ don’t reflect the serious burden of poverty … Continue reading
Posted in Social Justice, Uncategorized
Tagged accountability pressures, poverty, testing
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Test scores and poverty – it doesn’t add up
England’s schools are drowning in data. Everybody is obsessed with accountability statistics, from Ofsted down to the school cat. This obsession with data distorts the way we look at pupils and their education. 300 spreadsheet columns running from A to … Continue reading
Posted in Social Justice, Uncategorized
Tagged accountability pressures, disadvantage, poverty, testing
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Phonics test – Nick Gibb fails again
Schools minister Nick Gibb is crowing, once again, that thousands more children are ‘on track to become fluent readers’. Improved pass rates in the Phonics test show no such thing. “163,000 more 6-year-olds are on track to become fluent readers … Continue reading
Posted in Accountability, Uncategorized
Tagged accountability pressures, phonics, phonics check, politicians, testing
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SATs tests are still a shocking failure
Despite intensive test preparation and enormous stress for children and teachers, Key Stage 2 SATs tests for 2018 are a disaster once again. Figures published today show that only 64% of children passed Reading, Writing and Maths. That means 1 … Continue reading
Posted in Curriculum, Uncategorized
Tagged accountability pressures, disadvantage, testing
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“Pull yourself together, child!”
England is in the middle of a mental health crisis for young people, and a major cause is the way in which they are being put under pressure to achieve. It happens at university: 146 students killed themselves in 2016 … Continue reading
Posted in Accountability
Tagged accountability pressures, mental health, politicians, testing
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Reclaiming Schools 