Primary Assessment Consultation Continues

Much of this month's Education and Equalities Committee was spent discussing the NUT's strategy on primary assessment. With the recent House of Common's Select Committee Report and the Testing the Water report conducted on behalf of Pearson, not to mention our own Exam Factories report and The Mismeasurement of Learning by Reclaiming Schools, it is clear that the government cannot ignore the serious issues with primary assessment any longer.

They have opened a consultation on primary assessment and yet, far from improving the situation, the main recommendation of this consultation is the replacement of KS1 SATs with a compulsory baseline test at age 4. You can access and respond to the consultation here.

Putting Children First

I am sick to the back teeth of the reductionist, box-ticking, curriculum-narrowing, enthusiasm-crushing, soul-destroying, high-stakes Exam Factory culture that hangs, like a dark oppressive cloud of broken dreams, over our schools and our children’s education.

OK. That may seem a little strong but, if like me, you are a primary school teacher, or have a child in primary school, I suspect you know where I am coming from.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not opposed to assessment. How could I be? It is at the very heart of what I do as a teacher. I assess children’s learning from the moment they enter my classroom at 8.40am until I finish my marking at 11pm. I assess through targeted questioning during whole class teaching, through in depth discussion during independent and group work. I assess through marking written work, and taking notes of oral work and contributions to discussion. I probe children’s understanding, looking for misconceptions through which to take learning forward. And yes, I assess through setting and marking tests when that is the most effective way of gathering the information I need.

National Executive: General Secretary's Report

We are now only into the third week since conference and the union has been working at full pace to deliver material for the ballot and the wider campaign against the white paper. Christine thanked the union staff for all their work.

Teaching by Numbers vs Professionalism in Education

There was a lot of discussion at this year's NUT Conference about the impact that the increasing obsession with data has on education - the pressure towards teaching by numbers - and of teacher professionalism as the alternative to this.

Most teachers would describe themselves as education professionals but what does this actually mean?

Children Are More Than a Score

We’ve heard about the damage that high-stakes standardised testing is doing to our children’s education. We’ve heard about the impact it has on their self-esteem, on their mental health. So there’s a pretty obvious question to be asked.

Why, when the weight of educational research is against them, when the mass of parents are against them and when the professional judgement of teachers is against them, why would this government continue in its dogmatic obsession with standardised testing?

A Crucial Time for Education

As I prepare to travel to London for the National Executive today and tomorrow, I am struck by what a crucial time this is for education.

We have a government using a mantra of austerity to progressively underfund schools and sixth form colleges, whilst enforcing the mass privatisation of schools by an act of parliament, and changing the very nature of education through high-stakes standardised testing and hyper-accountability. The past couple of months have shown this in the extreme. At primary level, we have seen new assessments introduced which impose unrealistic and unhelpful targets on young children in a narrow range of skills. What is more, children will be expected to sit these tests in a couple of months, leaving teachers wondering how they will explain to children and their parents that they are no longer doing well but are now below 'national expectations' - that the government has arbitrarily deemed their child a failure aged 7 or 11.

Nicky Morgan's Tables Test

I love maths. I’m not ashamed to say it. I took maths and further maths at A-level and went on to spend three years doing a maths degree at Oxford before training as a primary school teacher. After ten years teaching, I have spent the past two years writing and implementing a new maths curriculum, running a peer coaching project in mathematics teaching, and teaching maths to groups of students at risk of underachievement.

So, you’d be forgiven for thinking that I might welcome Nicky Morgan’s new focus on primary maths teaching.

Austerity, Annexes & Exam Factories

At today's National Executive meeting, the General Secretary opened by welcoming the growing fight against austerity and commending the work of the People's Assembly.

She went on to describe the government's perverse decision to allow the opening of a grammar school 'annexe' in a different town. She announced that the Union would be working with Comprehensive Future on the question of how to challenge the decision.