11th April 2014 9:00
By Blue Tutors
The latest news from the government is that the education secretary’s plans to introduce a new formal test for four year olds will go ahead. The test is designed to give a baseline measure against which the government can test students’ results at a later stage, in order to judge the efficacy of the school. The DfE announced that schools would have to implement the tests at the earliest point in school, and said that schools would have a choice of approved tests. The tests will be used to measure how much progress students have made throughout their time at school, the ultimate goal being to set a target for the government to use to evaluate schools. They also announced that an elite group of primary schools would be able to opt out of the testing if they are confident that they will meet the targets outlined in later years.
The impact of this legislation on the tutoring industry will be significant. A growing number of parents are already asking for tutors to coach their children for exams for selective primary schools. I’m sure that a good number of these parents do not want their 3 year old children to be coached for exams, and yet they feel they have to in order to make sure that their child stays ahead. If the government is now sanctioning testing at such an early age, they are sending a clear message to parents that holding children up to this kind of formal academic standard from such a young age is acceptable. I think I speak for many private tutors, teachers and child development specialists when I say that it isn’t.
Coaching, tutoring and testing students from such an early age can profoundly damage their confidence and inhibit their ability to learn in their own way through play, conversation and interaction. It sets extraordinarily narrow standards for children and risks permanently damaging their self-esteem. And quite simply, it robs them of their childhood. As a private tutor, this is not something that I want any part of. The best thing about being a tutor is meeting with students and finding that you can really help them. They only thing we would do by tutoring pre-school children is to hinder their development. We may not have any say over government legislation, but we can stop the tutoring industry following suit.