SATS and Teacher Assessment

I have had a very personal reason to dislike SATS for the last two years as my two eldest have gone through them successively (good luck Eleanor!). It's not so much the tests that I object to per se, rather the total educational destruction of year 6 as it gradually descends into nothing more than a year of exam practice and revision. I've been in too many schools to believe ministers' bleating that it has minimal impact on the curriculum. Just added this link from BBC News (May 17th).The situation is so high-stakes for some schools that snap inspections, major LEA intervention programmes and head teachers' jobs are on the line if a school fails to perform according to expectation. No wonder schools feel pressure over these tests. I did a staff meeting in a Welsh school on Tuesday (no English school will talk to me this week) and the contrast in pressure could not have been more marked.

If the Welsh Department for Schools (don't know the real name) and Estyn (Welsh equivalent of Ofsted) feel they can trust teacher assessments, why can't the English? Which leads me on to the real purpose of this blog post which is to highlight an online teacher assessment recording system called Incerts. Incerts is a not-for-profit company that has developed a superb online teacher assessment system that accurately tracks pupil and group progress against National Curriculum objectives and Early Learning Goals; provides deep analytical data output in the form of Excel spreadsheets; and produces curriculum reports in a  Microsoft Word format. (Full disclosure: I provide training and consultancy for Incerts in the northwest of England). Many schools  using Incerts are now  feeling that the accuracy of the pupil tracking is such that they can successfully abandon the optional SATS in earlier keystage 2 years and at least reduce the level of testing in school that way, even if they can't abandon the SATS.

One of the effects of using Incerts in school is to raise the profile and trust that teachers and managers have in teacher assessments as opposed to test assessments. This can only be a good thing if we believe that the imposition of a high-stakes testing regime so early in a child's life has no beneficial effect on their education.

If you would like to set up a trial of Incerts in your school, or have a chat about its potential, either conact me, john@creativeict.co.uk (if you are northwest based) or Ian Billups, MD of Incerts Labs via his email: ian.billups@incerts.org

Comments

[Doug Dickinson]

Hi John !!

My comment on my blog post ...rpeated here ... I would love the children take it into their own hands and just sit there and not do the tests.

Wouldn't it be an interesting extension of 'user voice' if they asked what was in it for them and actually just refused to play the game?

Not too sure what teachers would think about this and what schools would/could do if it happened.

Would also be interesting if all the parents who are worried about their children's stress levels would simply vote with their feet for the test days.

Just can't understand why everyone goes on perpetuating a system which is so deeply flawed.