29th May 2019 9:00
By Blue Tutors
The head of Ofsted, Amanda Spielman, has warned that mentioning exams, even in a positive way, increases the stress on school pupils. Reported on the BBC, her comments were made during the launch of the new inspection framework which will place less emphasis on exam results and more on the way in which schools teach their students.
Spielman suggested that, for pupils taking SAT exams, in an ideal world they wouldn’t even know that they were being tested, and in situations where schools haven’t built up the exams, she has known pupils leave school saying “we did a maths booklet today”. Conversely, she also witnessed a head teacher positively motivating students, and felt it had the opposite to the desired effect. The worry is that our system’s focus on testing makes children feel anxious and creates poor mental health.
The new framework is designed to focus on student behaviour and attitudes, giving schools more power to clamp down on disruptive students and focus on individuals, but at the same time discourage schools from “off-rolling” poorly performing students. It will focus how schools are attempting to achieve results, rather than the results themselves.
These plans have not been widely supported however, with the National Education Union general secretary claiming that it is a missed opportunity and schools will continue to be judged by their results versus a national average, while it’s better to compare similar schools in the same area. The National Union of Headteachers said that the new suggestions aren’t workable and we’re giving inspectors too much to do given their resources.