Do MPs even live on this planet?

[Haly]

Why should 7 year olds or even 11 year olds have to face so much stress though? They're kids, they have an entire lifetime to be stressed and worried about things.
Im just glad that when I did my SATS, it was just a guide to see how I was doing at the time.

[SidewinderINC]

Originally Posted by Position69

Well maybe I'm alone in theis thread that I agree with SATS and I totally appreciate what I learned at school and it has helped me in my working life in many ways.

I had SATS style exams at 7, 11 and pre GCSE exams at 14 to see if we were good enough and which sets to go into for GCSEs. It did us no harm at all other than to prepare us for working hard. We were told from about age 9 that we were working towards good GCSE and A level grades.

I had homework from about age 6, it's probably why I can read and write properly. I'm not having a dig at your kids Pebs because they're bright and well rounded, but you only have to look at the likes of OcUK and you can see that a lot of people aren't getting taught much at school.

Don't knock SATS. A bit of stress early on in life makes stressful situations later on in life a lot easier to deal with and really prepares them for more important exams. If you're used to doing exams they are easy, if you're not you'll be stressed out and unable to think.

I think that makes sense, I'll come back and re-write this tomorrow.

I don't think that anyone is saying that SATS are pointless and that people don't appreciate the exams.

What people don't like is the extreme pressure that teachers are putting on pupils now.

I wasn't stressed during any of my exams until A2 level and I think I've turned out well, I was taught well at school and at home. You don't have to be stressed to be taught well, and you seem to come across as thinking that you do.

[Jonny69]

The point I'm trying to make is we were deliberately put through exams to accustom us to the environment, so that we know what the examination procedure is like.

So looking at at SAT and NCA exams it looks like they assess kids' levels at maths, reading, writing and how they deal with practical problems. Well no wonder teachers are stressing out about it, it's a direct reflection of how well they are teaching.

[Garp]

Originally Posted by Position69

The point I'm trying to make is we were deliberately put through exams to accustom us to the environment, so that we know what the examination procedure is like.

So looking at at SAT and NCA exams it looks like they assess kids' levels at maths, reading, writing and how they deal with practical problems. Well no wonder teachers are stressing out about it, it's a direct reflection of how well they are teaching.

Both the Tories and Labour have continued to do a superb job at screwing up the education system with their unending determination to meddle in things. The real reason kids are failing to get to grips with maths, reading and writing is because the government keeps screwing up the syllabus, and at the same time stopping the good teachers from being innovative.

For the most part SATs are just yet another way the government is producing statistics and information to publish to the country to show just how well they're running the stuff... and then when they see real figures, burying them in the sand.
Its no different from the stupid amounts of paperwork the Police have to produce so the government can say "violent crime is on the rise", or the NHS say "waiting lists are climbing"

Instead of ending up with a generation of kids able to think and learn and reason we get automatons that recite stuff. Gone are useful skills like critical thinking, source analysis and so on, with the emphasis being remembering stuff instead. We've got generations of kids coming up who know how to cram loads of information into their brain and keep in there for a few days. The emphasis on education has gone from depth to breadth.

Funding is becoming a complete fiasco. Instead of having a simple single pot of money set aside, say on the scale of £xxx per student, it's split between hundreds of pots with schools having to spend ages producing statistics and corroborating evidence to explain why they deserve to be able to take from certain pots. The result is the schools with the sneakiest support staff figure out ways of taking from extra pots whilst the schools without are stuck with less and less money to spend per pupil, whilst having similar outgoings. At my previous employers the principal spotted that if we put every student through a first aid course we could make a nice significant bit extra (more than the course cost) so that all students would be advantaged. The amount of administration time involved in claiming that pot was daft. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of pots like this.
The government routinely makes Caesar's Gold announcements about how they're putting money in education for high fliers, intellectuals and whatever, but the reality is they're taking out of the main pot for all students and putting it in a specific one, one with stupid amounts of paperwork required to claim from, disadvantaging the many for the benefit of the few.

[Joe 90]

Originally Posted by divine`

I have to agree with DRZ, there was zero pressure on them at all for me (I took my KS3/Y9 exams in 2000 or so).

same here.
I wouldn't say that the school was too intense through GCSE either - obviously they stressed the importance of a good result, but they weren't too intense on their delivery. which was nice

its all about league tables now though.

[Pebs]

Jonny I don't disagree with SATS in principle. WHat I do object to is the pressure that is piled on the kids. How is 3 months of intensive learning, including letters saying 'we think your child would benefit from coming to a maths crammer after school 2 evenings after school per week', which is what I got for Sophie, an accurate reflection on the teaching standards?? If kids aren't learning to the required standards in day to day schooling then they need to look at those teaching standards, not pile pressure onto young children.

And I also disagree wholeheartedly that children at primary school need to learn how to sit exams and cope with stress. Children should be given time to be children. Heaven knows it passes by in a flash, and in so many other ways they are children for shorter and shorter times.

[Desmo]

They were talking about this on Question Time the other week and many said the same Pebs. Testing kids is fine, but pressuring kids to meet certain standards so early on is not right. And let's be honest, it's not being done for the kids sake but so schools hit targets. It's all wrong.

[semi-pro waster]

Originally Posted by (Rubber) Johnny69

Everybody gets stressed doing exams, but imagine how much worse it would be if you'd never done one before. You don't walk in there shaking not knowing what to expect, you know the score because you're accustomed to it. Nothing wrong with a bit of practice in my opinion.

I'm not sure that is entirely true for everyone, exams have never really bothered me and I don't know quite why. I think that a lot of people put too much emphasis on them, sure they are important (at least for getting to the next level) but it is very rarely the end of the World if you fail an exam.

It definitely isn't fair putting really young kids under pressure to achieve in exams, some people naturally aren't academically inclined, such is life. I also don't think that league tables are a terribly useful way of measuring schools, as with any standardised measure they tend to ignore individual circumstances.