Routine
takes the drama out of testing
January 4, 2008
"It really works, Mum: the constant tests, the checking if
you're in school, the reports and grades. It keeps you up
to it," said my teenage son on the way back from parents'
evening.
Tests punctuate my son's school life. Yet they cause him no
especial grief. He is not one of those "tested to
destruction" kids. He just comes home, learns his stuff,
goes in, does the test, checks if he hasn't learnt
anything, then if necessary learns it again. Nor is he some
teenage angel; this is the pattern of behaviour which the
school lays down, and pupils - mostly - follow.
The paraphernalia of private education includes
twice-termly grades and termly reports, hand-written and
all about the pupil (no computer- programmed menu of
phrases), phone calls to find out why any pupil is absent;
weekly tests and marks for effort, prizes and honour marks.
All these ensure that no one slips behind. And while no
parent wants their child to struggle, fee-paying parents
may be particularly prone to pounce on backsliding.
But of course, these teacher-tests are not like Sats or
GCSEs, tests that dominate the landscape for months at a
time, tests that are taught to because they are there, that
diminish learning by narrowing it to set answers. These are
the kind of tests that teachers have always used: the
weekly "vocab" test, the trigonometry test, the
comprehension exercise on Of Mice and Men. Crucially, at my
son's school, they are not marked then forgotten. The
teachers note the weaknesses - at parents' evening they can
tell you strengths and weaknesses from every test and
homework that year - and use them to refocus teaching and
learning for individual students. To use the top terms of
today, they are tests for personalised learning and
assessment for learning. And because the tests are
frequent, there is little stress. Nothing except for
checking up on learning is riding on each test.
Private education is privileged, you may rightly say.
Classes are small, parents are motivated, children are
selected. Yet if all the money that has been spent on this,
that and the other education initiative in the last decade
had been spent on employing more classroom teachers to make
smaller classes; if, instead of running punishing national
tests, the Government would devolve funds to schools for
personalised assessment for learning; if "communities for
learners" (another buzzphrase) were to succeed in involving
families in their children's schooling, then tests could
stop being a dirty word and resume their place as a useful
tool for teachers. And pupils could take them in their
stride.
Victoria
Neumark, Parent of a sixth-former at an independent London
school.
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