This is my YouTube short this morning:
My suggestion is that everyone thinks that there is too much testing in schools, at cost to the quality of education that schools can and do provide. I suggest it is time to let our politicians know.
The transcript is:
Everyone thinks that there is too much testing in schools these days.
Children are tested when they arrive in schools.
Again at 7.
Again at 11.
Again at 14.
Again at 16.
And finally at 18.
When they're allowed to leave, they might have yet more tests.
Does that make sense?
Do we need that much testing?
Will children develop without it?
Might they even learn better and more useful skills than how to pass tests, which, once they reach the age of 18, they might never need again?
I believe we need to focus on education, not testing, and if you agree, ask your politicians about it during this election campaign.
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That is only the formal testing. Even at primary school level teachers have to submit detailed data regarding performance and at secondary school they are constantly being assessed. This clearly adds to anxiety and takes time away from actual learning. Children do not and should not be expected to develop at the same rate. No wonder we have so much mental health issues and off the scale SEND issues.
I entirely agree
Absolutely agree with much of what has been said.
There is so much emphasis on uniformity in children’s education, and just getting over certain hurdles that the process of learning and discovery has been eroded. Of course, there is political pressure to produce results and evidence of attainment. I recently had an interesting discussion at a Parents Evening with one of my older child’s Secondary School teachers and they freely admitted that they were teaching the exam, rather than focusing on discovering the subject. They lamented that this was inevitable and expected of all teachers (even in the private sector) as there is a results race and the league tables demand it. We shook our heads and sighed in acknowledgment..!
Naturally, children do need regular assessments which most teachers are doing day-to-day, but these are not the same as formalised “tests” and the associated pressure should never have become normalised the way it has been. People do develop at different rates in different skill sets and the curriculum should reflect this. However, the nature of having a state funded, centrally mandated education system means that uniformity and replicability becomes essential. There is a limit to what can be provided in every school, therefore ministers and civil servants are tasked with determining what are the basic standards and subsequent levels that society aspires to attain. They are almost obliged to design a system to fit for everyone. In reality, the Education system was never truly designed but it has morphed over time. The 1944 Education Act (brought in by R.A. Butler) aimed to reduced inequalities in the system and encourage children from poorer backgrounds to receive a better education. Its predecessor, the Spens Report called for the tripartite system of education, not dissimilar to what the Germans produced with their Gymnasium, Realschule and Hauptchule. The difficulties with the selection process that came in were that it was notoriously unfair – middle-class parents could get tutors to coach their less bright children to pass, poorer parents could not afford some of the hidden ‘fees’ (uniform costs, trips, travel expenses etc.) that some state-funded Grammar schools had, the ‘Secondary Modern’ schools had less funding per pupil, less teachers and were not offering the higher level exams even to their able pupils. These capable students did not even have the opportunity of sitting many O Levels and rarely did they progress to A Level even if very bright. The interesting podcast Jam Tomorrow mentioned this last issue on their episode in Feb ’23. The irony was that in the end it was middle-class parents who campaigned to bring down a lot of the grammar schools as their offspring did not get in to the better, selective schools!
The assessment and ‘testing’ process over the last 30 years, has gradually reached a level of absurdity. My family has teachers in it and they have muttered how strange things have become. It actually starts in NURSERIES, long before kids start formal school… In London, we were somewhat ‘horrified’ but at the same time relieved to find out what the nursery teachers were expected to record and document about the infants’ progress. They had to make written and photographic evidence that toddlers were progressing through quite broad and arbitrary stages of development. These nursery teachers had collated all this detailed information about milestones, communication and co-ordination that used to be the remit of a health visitor… It is far too intrusive, not leaving enough time for natural observation, interaction and simple play. The Finnish have got the right balance and are lucky to have a culture and work structure that facilitates parents staying at home for much longer before re-entering the work force.
By the time a child enters formal school at 7 years old they have already been ‘tested’ to the extreme. The language around testing then becomes more serious after primary school. I personally believe that this is a cultural problem and that the way we talk about the test has become far too summative when the process should predominantly by ‘formative’ i.e. developing understanding and filling in the gaps. The formal ‘external’ exams at 11 and 14 are still crucial to gain an understanding of where a child sits compared to their peers. However, I am sceptical of how fair they really are and the notorious effect of tutoring on skewing the results.
On reflection, my own schooling was privileged – I was very fortunate to get a scholarship and a charitable bursary so was sent away to boarding school instead of grammar school or the local comprehensive. The teaching was rigorous but rather holistic, and testing took place so frequently that no one even considered it an issue. By the time, one got to the end of the term it was a given that you would have to sit a short ‘exam’. The teachers were firm but kind and just wanted you to improve to the best of your ability. (The end of year exams were still stressful as one felt that you could be in big trouble when you returned home.)
Our Headmaster placed emphasis on ‘value added’, not just on individual attainment level. He very much took on board a pupil’s socio-economic background and home life situation. His ethos was rising from where you had been and improvement over time. That is where Michael Gove has been right in emphasising relative gains, adding value and not limiting a child’s aspirations. That was a huge issue with the comprehensive system, aided and abetted by ‘well meaning’ patrician politicians, (even on the left), who felt that people should not rise out of their social milieu.
There needs to be a move away from learning through – regurgitation of facts, quoting passages of speeches, plundering the Internet (now made simple by AI) and reproducing perfectly structured essays under carefully timed conditions, back to a deeper understanding and love for ideas. The switch needs to be made relatively quickly as the rise in AI has meant that mindless production and replication of data is simple. However, we all need to synthesise information and interpret correctly in order to make sense of the World. We need integrated thinking to discover new possibilities. The reliance on technology and computing has potentially dulled human creativity and the love for our fellow human beings.
Thanks
Finland has one of the best education systems in the world.
1) There are no standardised tests
2) Teachers have to be highly qualified
3) Teachers have more freedom in the classroom
4) Homework isn’t as widely used
5) Kids don’t start school until they’re 7
Details here: https://careerteachers.co.uk/what-the-uk-education-system-can-learn-from-finland/
I believe that the continual testing is as much about micro-management of teachers as education. Teachers are commonly perceived as having long and well-paid holidays, so they are burdened with make-work clerking. Whereas, they are well-trained professionals who deserve support, being tasked with bringing up generations of children. That is one of the most demanding of jobs and a great resposibility, deserving much more appreciation all round than they are currently given.
(I`m not a teacher, by the way!)
You are absolutely correct.
The excessive testing of children is all part and parcel of the accountability regime imposed on our schools.
The other is the onerous and ultimately useless OFSTED.
A very successful and very astute business man once told me that if he was paying a consultant the fee schools have to pay – out of their already squeezed budgets – he would expect a much more professional, informative, and useful report, one which, after pointing out problems, would also provide viable solutions to the same!
People may be unaware that with the academy programme, most of the school system has been privatized, and like the rest of our privatized sector of the economy is not fit for purpose.
And this is all before I start on the ludicrous-verging-on-criminal National Curriculum…….. That is another brake rather than springboard.
@ Paul McElhatton
As I’ve observed to Richard long ago, one of Gove’s first actions in his disastrous tenure of the Education ministry was to abolish the General Teaching Council.
This gave teachers the same sort of status as doctors, with their General Medical Council, barristers withe the Bar Council, and solicitors, with the Law Society.
Far too much recognition of teachers as professionals, worthy of proper support and regulation for the repellent Mr Gove. Oh no, they only deserved to be viewed as pen-pushing clerks (to pick up your image), in Scrooge McGove’s Victorian revival of mis-education.
An utterly vile man. A disaster for UK education. And of course there’s too much testing in the UK system, as Ian Tristan observed in his comments on Finland.
In Finland the only formal testing is their national 16+ matric. assessments.
Yet this country is acknowledged as having one of the best education systems globally.
We tried to transfer this thinking to Scotland with our ‘Curriculum for Excellence’, some 20 years ago now, but the conservatism of secondary testing, and especially the SQA, saw the Finnish model heavily diluted, so we still ended up teaching to the test, and that was exceptionally disappointing.
All teachers are constantly assessing students in one way or another, even in an everyday class Q&A, and self assessment is a very valuable pedagogic tool, and probably one of the best approaches for students to gauge their own progress.
Incidentally, there is not only too much testing IN schools, but too much testing and grading OF schools, often with simplistic criteria and instantly benchmarks during short inspections.
OFSTED was always a political project and teachers often kicked by politicians to cover for underfunding. In England, Gove put the clock back decades with his dire dogma, during his period in Education.
Thanks
It is almost two decades since I stopped teaching but I have been a GCSE marker and Invigilator for much of that time.
Some assessment is necessary but it has become the tail that wags the dog.
It is not just pupils who are judged but the teachers too. Demoralising for both, especially if the teacher has classes where there is a lot of anti-social behaviour. ‘You are not meeting your targets’ becomes the phrase that deadens people’s careers. How relevant are the targets is a question that should be addressed. Not all that can be measured actually counts in education.
I have a friend who was a senior HMI Her Majesty’s Inspector of schools. The HMI ( some 12 or so years ago admittedly ) had an informal meeting are decided the PISA scores -international testing- are biased to mechanical skills , although I gather there have been some changes. Yet these scores are brandished about as evidence that a party is or is not providing good education. Yesterday I heard Starmer tell of meeting a girl who did not read and his conclusion was that the SNP had failed.
Creativity and divergent thinking are not given the same importance.
Those subjects have suffered-arts, music, drama, even design and Technology ( being a more expensive subject due to the cost of materials, smaller classes for safety and equipment like lathes ) have lost time or even no longer offered.
But it is short sighted. Important to the economy IT and science are, there are jobs which need other skills.
This country makes films and TV sold around the world. Tourists came to see our plays and heritage. British publishing is an important industry. Fashion likewise. We need people with humane abilities developed in humanities classes.
These subjects often get the attention of kids who don’t flourish on the core subjects. We had needless and pointless grammar inflicted on children who according to Piaget are not ready for that stage of thinking. Much of the GCSE maths curriculum very few will ever use. And, frankly, after a few years no one in HR and hiring is much interested in the GCSE scores.
To discuss education as a competition in grade scoring does our children a disservice.
Agreed
I’m a teacher (economics) here in the Netherlands. I’m currently teaching at a VMBO school, which is vocational education as opposed to traditional education, which is provided at other schools.
Even within this scenario, and dpread across 3 different levels, we test our pupils 4 times a year in years 1 to 3 and in their final year it’s 3 tests and then finals from May.
It’s madness, I even had to force a change the curriculum to replace 5 of the 15 exam moments with project-based assignments. That’s far more in-tune with vocational efucation than sitting exams.
Thankfully, I got my way, but we still have far too much in the way of exams.
That sounds crazy….
Children as a quality assured product is the idea, it seems
Going back 30+ years I suggest that there was a certain ‘lack of accountability’ in Education at all levels.
I suggest that its now gone too far the other way.
We should be asking what are we testing, how and why.
If we know that then we can test enough and the right way
One might certainly think that there is too much formal testing.
On the other hand there seems to be inadequate continuous testing by teachers. This need not stress the children. But the teacher’s need to know week on week how the children are progressing, what they have understood, what gaps they have. This allows the teacher to plan the next lessons. All classes are different. All children are different. You can’t teach them properly if you don’t measure progress.
But I agree it is often not done well. The quality of teachers is not as good as I would like. Too many seem to have a poor grasp of standardised tests. This allows unmet need, undiagnosed conditions (autism, ADHD, trauma, dislexia, discalculia etc) to go undetected for far to long.
Of course we should not stress the children. Of course we should not teach to the test. But please please don’t avoid continuous testing or children will suffer.
You don’t need to test to know how a class is progressing or how is, and is not, learning
You talk to them and discuss their work
It really does not take long
Just the same as you can mark most essays on the first 150 words
I think we may be slightly at cross purposes. I’m talking about primary schools, about which my ear is bent regularly.
8 year olds don’t write essays. Nor can you talk to them and ask whether they understand. You do have to test, assess vocabulary, check reading. Do they understand what a fraction is, or are they merely going through an algorithm without understanding (often true)? So you do have to “test” very regularly, every few days. But this can be quick, non stressful, and just part of regular lessons.
Then, every year, they need to be tested to see whether they have made progress. Again, this needn’t be particularly stressful. It’s here where you need standardised tests so you can objectively assess where children are and what they need. A recent academic article that appeared in our house measured the self fulfilling predictions by teachers of ability and potential. Teacher’s do their best (and I have immense respect), but they need objective data.
Where I very much agree is that there should not be teaching to a test (they are for information to improve teaching), and they must not be stressful (which can certainly be achieved).
Hope that has clarified my view.
I am not at all sure I agree with you
If we train teachers properly they know who is understanding and who is not
And 8 year olds can definitely explain what they do and don’t understand – as well as many undergraduates – and often more so as they tend to BS less
I don’t agree with Tim Kent about needing testing. However I do think some of it is about interpreting words, saying ‘ no testing’ can be limiting also, and yes a teacher can if needed do a quick fun game even asking questions – but really there is no need for standardization with this. Teachers need to be trusted and probably as in France, given less contact time during the week so they have more time to understand how the student is getting on. It is not that difficult if you have this time to ask a few pertinent questions without stress to see how an 8 yr old understands. I think the national curriculum requirements while maybe meaning to assist come across as having little faith in a teacher to teach, and undermine that need to develop from experience of what needs to be learnt and how to get it across.
@ Tim Kent
You say “But please please don’t avoid continuous testing or children will suffer.”
As Ian Tresman observes, Finland just proves you wrong – and not just on the testing issue, but in all your points, such as “The quality of teachers is not as good as I would like. Too many seem to have a poor grasp of standardised tests” (evidence?), where in Finland, as Ian Tristan states
1) There are no standardised tests
2) Teachers have to be highly qualified
3) Teachers have more freedom in the classroom
4) Homework isn’t as widely used
5) Kids don’t start school until they’re 7
Be it noted that Finland regularly does extremely well in the PISA tables.
I’m all in favour of highly qualified teachers including, or perhaps especially, in primary education. And they need to be properly remunerated,which they definitely are not in UK. This would go a long way to addressing many issues.
I don’t know a lot about Finnish education but a doubt you’re right about there being no standardised tests, at least in primary. My guess is that they are not “public” tests, i.e. marks not released other than to those tested. Take an example, testing vocabulary. I hope you agree that teachers need to know the vocabulary of their pupils (both for reading, writing and comprehension)? These kind of tests are, and need to be, standardised tests. Vocabulary testing goes on regularly but shouldn’t be particularly stressful. Similar sorts of standardised tests are need for maths. Without such tests teaching cannot work properly.
But I agree tests should not be stressful, pitting pupils against one another. They are a tool to improve teaching quality.
There is comment elsewhere in this thread that suggests there are no such tests in Finland – and that is my understanding
@ tim kent
Teaching is an all graduate profession in Scotland.
I’m not sure what level of qualifications you think are required.
“Do they understand what a fraction is, or are they merely going through an algorithm without understanding (often true)? So you do have to “test” very regularly, every few days.”
You seem hung up on ‘tests’ which is just not how it works at all.
I’ve taught numeracy at P3-7 (primary/junior) level and algorithms just don’t come into it either.
There are primary curricular benchmarks for almost everything across all basic numeracy and literacy skills, and you review the weans constantly against these basics.
Then .. periodically, you might want to record achievement against benchmarks.
You do not need to do formal testing, let alone SATS.
Every teacher will know pretty much how every student is doing at all times, (assuming they are not in super sized classes)
I could spend an hour a day doing mental arithmetic with a mixed group of P4-6 (junior) (Scottish rural primaries often have such groups) and I will know exactly how well they are doing, from their immediate responses.
I will also know what are reasonable expectations within that age range – and that on a daily basis.
Incidentally, for many of these skills, heuristics are pretty important, so teaching P4-6s their 19x or 21x table (as mental arithmetic), can become a fun exercise for them.
Especially with numeracy, confidence in handling numbers and number patterns is really important for progress. Familiarity, both through repetition, and in playing number games is a part of that confidence building.
I know of no testing system that can evaluate a child’s confidence in number handling.
It is achieved through learning by doing. Darts players often tend to be pretty good at subtraction.
You might have a go and time yourself to see how long you take to work out 19×9 mentally.
Very much to agree with
I have only taught post-school – but much resonates
If you are teaching you need to get feedback every lesson, and during lessons, not every week.
At secondary level there is usually a short wrap period at the end of a lesson, the object of which is to evaluate both teaching and learning.
Nor do teachers usually prepare and plan lessons one at a time.
Assessment and testing are entirely different processes.
The former is a continuous process
I can only assume you are not a teacher.
Surely all schools should be using continuous ‘testing’. Not a formal, marked exam, but just the teachers listening to and paying attention to what their students are doing. A good teacher should have a mental image of each student and their needs and abilities. Not measured against some national standard, but measured for that person.
I believe the problem arose because of the spread of parental choice of schools. Parents want the best for their child so they want information on what is best. But best at what? A school may be fantastic at teaching academically able people, but fail with those whose talents lie elsewhere. Or brilliant in identifying and developing an individual’s talents while leaving those who are perceived as able to get on with it.
Doing away with parental choice of schools would, in my opinion, be advantageous for everyone.
Clearly, children aren’t being educated. Instead, they’re being schooled.
Child minded
My kids were educated in the UK then in France. At first i was disappointed by the amount of routing testing in France – but gradually I realised it was very different from testing in the UK.
In France, most teachers test routinely – but it is the teacher doing it, to genuinely assist the kids’ education – it’s no big deal in the classroom, nor for the school. The big ‘external exams’ – the brevet at 14-15 and bac at 17-18 are not any big deal either – for many both are all over in a week – and in France you are guaranteed a university place just by passing.
My experience of the two countries therefore leads me to think that it’s not so much testing itself that’s the problem, but the UK’s destructive culture around testing – and especially, perhaps, its use to rate kids, teachers and schools rather than genuinely assist educational outcomes.
Interesting points
Standardised testing has been used historically in the UK to sort young people into categories so that only the “best” go on to the “best” schools and universities. Following Cyril Burt England gave birth to the 11+ and different types of school allegedly most suitable for their varying level “abilities” as discovered at age 11. (Scotland had the Quali). Burt was later found to have falsified his evidence. But the idea of “sorting” and picking out the “brightest” while blighting the “hopeless” has stuck.
However, as Geoff points out, it depends on who is doing the testing, what it is for and how the results will be used. Used diagnostically to inform teaching testing may be useful. For sorting and labelling it is counterproductive.
Assessment is something different and is what teachers (and more widely in social interactions) do all the time and can be as informal as you like or relatively formal as in an essay or other piece of work. As a former teacher (and my wife was latterly a secondary head) I believe there is room for both if given in the best interests of the pupils.
But as long as politicians (and universities) want formal end of school testing then a teacher would be failing the young people if they did not address that reality in some way. Unfortunately, politicians see education as instrumental a long way from the Aristotelian view of education being worthwhile for its own sake.
About 60 years ago, at my high school in Motherwell, one of our more honest teachers told us:
“I’m not here to teach you French, I’m here to teach you to pass the leaving certificate exam.”
The testing regime was introduced by Kenneth Baker along with the National Curriculum.
The Conservative politicians have never given much praise to state school teachers and are always critical of teachers’ unions- as they are of medical union/professional associations. The inspection ethos of OFSTED reminds one of the 1862-1890 Payments by Results. ‘If it is not cheap it shall be efficient. If it is not efficient it shall be cheap.’
Since 2010 another aim has become much more apparent. Schools that don’t do well in an OFSTED inspection are usually removed from local authority control and put into an academy. I know of one school who ‘failed’ the inspection and were put into a two school academy, the other being a school in the more prosperous area of a bigger town. A few months later the ‘failing school’ got their best ever GCSE results.
The neo-liberal approach is that “private will always be better than public.” I think the wider agenda is the ‘privatisation of the education system in England. Elected people don’t get to become governors -or trustees. They tend to be -according to the website governors for schools .org, people who have board experience. They are company directors.
Do we not see something similar with the way the wider economy is run? If profits are not sustained , shares prices fall and the company is danger of take-over. It encourages short-termism, lack of investment and wage suppression to keep up profits and share values.
In academy schools I feel structure of governance encourages ‘Conservative values’ and this is deliberate.
PS the system of inspection in the private sector is much more supportive and helpful. Like Karl Greenall suggests.
Tony has given the idealised lesson structure, and one expected by the ‘teaching objectives’ list promulgated by central government and training institutions. The realities are far from that, even before you address the problems in teaching semiferal Year 9s, replete with social, emotional and hormonal problems, usually these days with no TA or SEND support. You are expected to do it all yourself having read the appropriate emails and attended after school training. Politicos will point to the few academies where draconian control of all behaviour ensures performance indistinguishable from other institutions (according to govt stats). The elephant in the room is that this system has created generations of test takers, where knowledge is merely a vehicle and irrelevant to the world outside. My favourite quote, from teaching an A/A* class basic behaviourism and initiating a discussion on its use in advertising: “Is this in the exam. If not, why are you wasting my time?”
PS I am a current teacher, Tony.
@ John
Of course pragmatism, and the art of the possible, is what it is all about at an every day level. No, the politicos do not understand that.
Tory cuts had a massive impact here post 2013, when austerity really bit very hard. My authority simply stopped providing TAs, and just dumped most of them as they were on short contracts, so easy to drop, and almost completely wrote off specialist ASN support.
My then S2 class of 24 had 18 students with ASN, but only one TA with me in class, and that for only one lesson out of three timetabled a week, meant that both teaching and learning did not conform to the ideals of pedagogy.
We’ve all been there.
Fascinating topic, and one which interests me though I can’t pretend to know any answers. My interest comes from my own education, my career which involved a lot of post-school teaching, and the fact I am currently a school governor keen to support the local comprehensive school my daughter attended.
I don’t see testing as inherently bad, from my own experience as both a learner and a teacher real education always involves a teacher always asking questions of you and getting you always to build on what you already know and think beyond that. And I do see some sort of test as the way to set goals for the end of one stage of education in preparation for the next. For example the job of secondary schools would be impossible if there wasn’t a reference level of literacy and numeracy their feeder primary schools had aimed at, and secondary in years 7 to 11 needs GCSE as a way of presenting a target in subjects pupils won’t be continuing – and indeed in those they do.
OFSTED gets villified – and I do think it should be more developmental in approach – but HMIs have existed for much longer than OFSTED and for good reason, it is appropriate that government should get feedback from appropriately qualified inspectors on the effectiveness of public spending, whether it is on schools, prisons, or whatever. It’s main current problem is its summary judgements lacking anything between “Requires Improvement” implying significantly substandard and “Good” implying significantly better than adequate. I do see the logic that they didn’t want schools coasting at a level of “marginally OK” but it has resulted in morale-sapping damnation of schools making the best of difficult circumstances.
I have no complaint though about criticism of Michael Gove. He did a lot of damage with his elevation of memorising facts (and specifically, facts he personally favoured) as more important than understanding. It isn’t impossible to devise tests which look for skills and understanding rather than recall. But to be fair, his introduction of the Progress 8 measure as an assessment of schools (whether on average they had raised pupils’ test scores above what would be expected from their previous performance) was I think a positive innovation, it focussed schools on stretching students’ expectations or in political-speak “adding value”.