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Panorama: SATs given poor marks by critics |
The chair of the House of Commons Select Committee on Schools, Children and Families criticises Standard Assessment Tests (SATs) on the eve of the publication of a report on testing in schools.
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He tells Panorama (Monday 12 May, 8.30pm, 91Èȱ¬ One): "There's something wrong with the amount of testing and assessment we're doing, the quality of testing and assessment we're doing, and the unseen consequences of that testing for the whole school culture."
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Barry Sheerman MP (Labour) has examined evidence from the key education bodies and condemns the whole testing regime.
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"It is still a culture where the success of a child of a teacher, of a school is linked to testing, testing, testing, that is the problem," he says.
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Panorama: Tested To Destruction will be shown at the beginning of the week that 11-year olds in England take their SATs, and on the eve of the publication of a report on testing in schools from the House of Commons Select Committee on Schools, Children and Families.
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SATs results are part of the targets that the Government expects schools to meet, and which are published, and then ranked, by the media, into "league tables".
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Frank Bunting, a Year 6 teacher in the Phoenix Primary School in Liverpool, says of SATs: "I dislike them. I resent them. But more than anything else I resent the league tables that go with them."
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The Schools Minister Jim Knight MP is interviewed for the programme.
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He says he is standing by SATs and that they are about accountability: "SATs are there to give pupils an understanding of how they're doing nationally, to give parents the opportunity to see how well their child is doing and how well the school is doing, and for the public to see how well schools generally and how the school system as a whole is performing."
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And he says SATs are driving standards up: "I look at results, I look at the fact that our results are improving year on year. The standards in our schools are rising, and part of the reasons for that are tests and tables."
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But in Wales SATs were scrapped in 2004 in the devolved Welsh Assembly Government by the (then) Labour administration.
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The Welsh Assembly Government's present Education Minister Jane Hutt AM (Labour) tells Panorama: "In terms of the evidence it was quite clear that we had to enable our teachers to be able to be free of the 'teach to test' culture. that of course we knew wasn't effective, wasn't enabling our teachers to be productive in the classroom."
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Panorama also examines the Government's proposed reform of the SATs system, so-called "single level tests", under which pupils would be tested from the age of seven, when their teachers think they are ready, to see if they have moved up by one level of attainment.
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These exams are now being piloted in a number of English schools. In the pilots children can be entered for these tests in December or June.
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But the Chair of the Select Committee Barry Sheerman MP criticises these tests as well and says they risk leading to even more continuous exam pressure:
"Single level testing that can take place at any time means that testing is ever present in the atmosphere of a school."
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And the head teacher of Mersea Island School in Essex, one of the pilot schools, Sue Shenton, warns of the harm the tests may do if the rest of the system remains unchanged.
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She says: "If the target-setting agenda, the pressure to achieve constantly higher every year, is applied to the single level testing system, what you're doing is spreading the pressure down through the school down to year three who are only aged seven."
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And she says: "What I would really like is the people, I suppose in Government, to start listening to the professionals on the ground, which they do not do."
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A group of children in Year 6 in Liverpool's Phoenix Primary School were asked by Panorama to draw the animal that SATs made them think of.
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Those who said afterwards that they thought SATs and exams were bad drew monsters (one titled "SATS monster"), and so did those who said thought they were good (their monsters policed exams and stopped cheating).
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A group of pupils in Year 6 in Bryn Deva Primary School, in Connah's Quay in North Wales – without SATs – were asked a similar question to those in Liverpool: to draw the animals that "tests" made them think of. They drew friendly, supportive creatures that helped in tests.
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The reporter is Vivian White.
Ìý The programme is a Mentorn Media production for the 91Èȱ¬.
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Panorama: Tested To Destruction, 8.30 pm, 91Èȱ¬ One, Monday 12 May 2008
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