Storm-free so far. And a rant about exam pressure!

I was expecting Storm Dennis this morning but instead I woke to a calm blue sky and sunshine. There was frost on the shed roof and all over the back garden. The seagulls were sitting on the thin ice on the millpond and the mud puddles were nicely frozen, making running along the bridle path a much less squelchy experience than it has been of late. By mid morning the frost had disappeared from the garden. So had the blue sky and sunshine! There was still no sign of Dennis. Maybe he will turn up later.

Storms and hurricanes are named but not periods of other sorts of weather. We don’t hear about Heatwave Hilda or Drought Daniel. And yet heatwaves and droughts can cause damage too. Maybe it’s because storms and hurricanes come in with so much noise and bluster, like noisy children demanding lots of attention.

On the subject of children, how about this?

“Primary schools in England are holding half-term and Easter holiday revision classes for pupils as young as six to prepare them for standardised tests known as Sats, the Guardian has learned. The use of holiday “booster sessions” for pupils in year two was robustly condemned by the Department for Education (DfE) and major teaching unions, with one union leader describing them as “an extraordinarily bad idea” with no positive impact.

One primary school in north London has invited its year two pupils to attend voluntary revision sessions during next week’s half-term holiday, well in advance of the tests on maths, literacy and grammar due in May.”

Here’s the whole article for those who want to read it.

The sad thing is that there will be loads of parents who feel the need to send their little darlings along to these classes. Some will do so because they think it is the best thing to do for their offspring, others because they don’t want to be seen as neglectful parents. Keeping up with the Joneses has a lot of force! There always have been possibly over-zealous parents who pushed their children perhaps a little too much. When we were sitting the 11 Plus exam at the end of 1950s there were parents who arranged private tuition to help their sons and daughters do as well as possible. A friend of mine was something of a nervous wreck as a result of this. But mostly we took it in our stride, which is how it really should be.

When I worked as an A-Level tutor in a sixth form college it was almost de rigueur to put on revision sessions for your classes in the Easter holidays, something I found myself pressurised into doing and which I resented somewhat. After all, I had already dedicated a lot of my marking and preparation time to extra small group practice sessions in preparation for the spoken examinations which often took place before the Easter break. We had worked hard throughout the course and I had given the students masses of revision materials, including advice on HOW to revise and tips on exam technique. And besides, independent study is a skill they need to develop ready to go on to university.

Last year I was quite shocked at how many extra classes my granddaughter’s comprehensive school was organising for Year 11 pupils in the run-up to GCSE exams. My granddaughter was turning up at school at 7.45, which meant that her teachers were doing the same and, indeed, probably arriving a lot earlier to get everything organised. As if teachers did not already have enough pressure. Because of course it is all down to the pressure to meet targets for exam passes and ever higher grades year on year.

And there is also a whole industry dedicated to private tuition in almost every subject. My daughter has friends who make quite a good living out of it. Not all of it takes place at home. In the small town where my son lives what used to be a charity shop has turned into a sweatshop for getting children through the 11 Plus exam (yes, he lives in a place where the grammar school still exists) where sad children spend after school time and Saturday mornings trying to improve themselves.

But to put such pressure on six year olds is quite beyond belief. In fact, it’s morally wrong. We hear a lot about children, even very young children, suffering from stress. Surely one of the causes of this stress is the excessive importance given to SATs by both parents and teachers. The teachers’ nervousness about meeting targets and the parents’ worries about their little ones perhaps not achieving as well or better than their peers transfers to the children who have to sit the test. And how unnatural to test small children in a formal manner! On the one hand we teach and encourage them to be cooperative, to share and to talk about their ideas and their schoolwork. On the other we make then do an individual test.

Their has to be a better way to organise things.