How to fail children: A review of the 2018 KS1 SATs test in reading

In England children sit tests in maths and reading at the end of Key Stage 1, which is when they are likely to be 7.  Whatever we might all individually feel about testing at this age, if testing is going to happen it must be done rigorously well.  It should not set children up to fail. It should not allow them to fail through sloppy exam design. It should not model bad practice. This year's SAT in reading fails.

The reading test asks the child to read two pieces of text and answer questions on them. One piece is a story — or at least a fictional narrative. The other piece is non-fiction. I am happy to see fiction and non-fiction given equal status. After all, the child's entire school career will depend on being able to extract appropriate and accurate information from non-fiction texts. A good start.

The story is (inevitably) anodyne and dull. Not the sort of thing to inspire children. But, letting that go. Let's see how well we can do with a reading/comprehension test for 7-year-olds. Should be easy enough, no?

Text:

 

Seems fairly clear: he's excited. 

Question: 

He wasn't any of these. He was excited. I guess we are supposed to think happy=excited.  That's not going to sit well with teaching children that words have distinct meanings and nuance.

Hang on a minute. What's the best way of learning what a text is about before trying to extract information from it? Maybe read it. Read all of it. If I was teaching comprehension, I'd tell the pupil to read the whole text and then go back through it answering the questions. That's at least what I taught undergraduates doing practical criticism. This strategy would likely lead the child to fail here, though. Later, Byrn meets his cousin:

And there is another question:

So now he is nervous. He is excited to meet his cousin, and that makes him nervous. It doesn't make him happy. If we read the whole story and chose 'worried' in the first question, we'd lose a mark—even though there is nothing to suggest that Bryn was 'happy'.

Let's look at the story. It doesn't model good writing.

 

Bryn has got his toys out (so they were put away previously) and his dad says he's pleased to see him tidying up? How does his room look better with things lined up on the floor? This doesn't make sense. Is it a joke, indicating his dad doesn't know what his room looked like before? Isn't that rather an unfair thing to put in an exam, when the kids will be anxious anyway? Or is it there just to trick the kids so that they answer this question wrongly?

And what about that second sentence? "He decided Clare could choose first which to play with, although he couldn't help hoping it wouldn't be the big blue one." This should be two sentences. Why is there a double negative? These kids are 7! "Clare could choose first which" is not an easy construction. 

Next page:

Well. Whatever happened to the toys-will-be-toys campaign and its books counterpart? All that effort we are putting into telling children that there is No Such Thing As A Book For Girls or a Book For Boys. Thank you, HM Government for undermining that one.  There is, sadly, not an opportunity to point out that Bryn has been brainwashed by narrow-minded gender stereotyping (that is not compensated for by his mother driving a tractor).

I won't go through the second text, but will just say that it starts with the ill-informed sentence "Do you take a lunchbox to school with you?" All KS 1 children in state schools in England are provided with free school meals. They don't generally take lunchboxes. Some schools don't allow them to take lunchboxes. Perhaps the examiners' children go to private schools?  Perhaps the examiners never set foot in a primary school? Perhaps, if we are going to test these young children, we should test the tests first. 


*All exam text and images are Crown copyright and reproduced here within the terms of the Open Government Licence. 

Anne Rooney
Dinosaur Atlas: out now, shortlisted for SLA prize 2018