3rd August 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
The Government has announced that there will be changes to the widely criticised SATs tests taken by 11 year old primary school students. Teachers in England said that because the tests were externally marked, it created a culture of teaching to score well in the tests, and that that wasn’t always best for each individual student. Reported on the BBC website, after a review from Lord Bew, it has been decided that there will be an increased emphasis on teacher assessment, but still with some exams that will be externally assessed.
Students will now be assessed by their teachers on composition, rather than the old creative writing test, and this will be over a period of time, rather than after a short test. However, students will still have to complete Maths and Reading tests, which will be externally marked. Teachers have welcomed the change, but still do not feel that it goes far enough, and they say that it still places them in a situation where they are under pressure to teach exam technique, and not genuine understanding.
The changes in assessment are accompanied by changes in the way that school league tables are compiled. The results will now be given over a three year period, to give a more general idea of a school’s performance, and not a snapshot of a single year. The tables will also show student improvement, and indicate whether the students measured have been at the school for a long period of time, or whether they have recently transferred there. This will show how much value each school is actually adding, rather than simply the level at which a student is.
The government believe that the changes should have “the confidence of all parties”, but after 4,000 schools boycotted the tests last year, it remains to be seen whether the changes have gone far enough to encourage schools to accept that they are now more representative of each schools performance.