Shame on teachers who boycott SATs
THREE-HUNDRED-THOUSAND 10 and 11-year-olds won’t sit their SATs tests this week. dare to ask why not and the answer could come courtesy of a sullen toddler in the throes of a temper tantrum: ‘shan’t! Can’t! Won’t!’ teachers don’t like SATs because they’re a fag and a fiddle and a nastily reliable audit provider. equip a class full of mixed ability children for a formal test? no thanks, mind if I don’t?
They claim that “teaching to test” clips their wings, cramps their style and chops their chance to set their pupils’ imaginations soaring. unrestricted by SATs they could rove and roam through cultures and civilisations stopping here to admire a horse chestnut in full blossom, there to dissect the lyrics of a noel Coward ditty, and over there for a fruitful foray into etruscan murals.
Hampered and hindered by the dead weight of SATs impairing their pedagogic freedom, teachers furrow their brows and complain and bewail the stultifying effect of a handful of reading, writing, spelling and maths tests on their own creativity and their disciples’ future intellectual development.
Headteachers who don’t want incompetence or inadequacy exposed, children who’d far rather chew their pencils and text under the desk than be put through their paces and parents who fear the rigours of a test might subject their delicate darlings to immeasurable trauma have demonised SATs to the point where a boycott by almost half Britain’s schools became inevitable. the aversion to these innocuous little tests gathered momentum until one might have been forgiven for thinking innocent and unprepared 11-year-olds were being forced by menacing examiners to compose learned treatises on logical positivism and quantum physics.
What a lot of stuff and nonsense, as my old headmistress used to say before ushering us into yet another room policed by an invigilator to sit yet another examination. We took so many of the things, the phrases “timed essay”, “pick up your papers now” and “under exam conditions” held no fear for us whatsoever.
We were entirely used to writing feverishly against the clock, debating whether to stretch our cramped hands for temporary relief, knowing the pain would be all the greater when we clamped them back
into a writing position, or carry on scrawling as our fingers went numb and steadying our answers with our elbows while raising our hands for more paper.
What’s more, we were used to being handed our cross-strewn papers, with “53% a sorry state of affairs!” scribbled across the top in scarlet ink.
We knew who’d scaled the heights. We knew who’d plumbed the depths. there was no disguising a poor performance and nothing except hard work or extra revision would save us from further humiliation. tests are supposed to be testing. that’s the whole point. teachers, pupils and parents are meant to find them taxing and stressful.
It’s the only way to separate sheep from goats and this indulgent and selfishly short-sighted boycott condemns both children and teachers to life in the goat pen.