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

IMAGINATION – WHERE DOES IT COME FROM? by Lynne Benton

This blog follows on neatly from yesterday’s Blog by Sheena Wilkinson, though when I wrote this I had no idea what hers would be about! 

I’ve just been going through a pile of my mother’s old exercise books, dating from the late thirties.  After she died I brought them back with me when we emptied her flat, but I’ve only just got round to looking at them. I was particularly keen to read her English books, to see what sort of work children at the top end of primary schools were expected to do back then.  We hear so much that those were “the good old days” that I was prepared to be impressed.

This is what I found:

As far as neatness was concerned, full marks.

As far as grammar, spelling and punctuation was concerned, full marks.

There were also several famous poems copied out faithfully.

But as far as writing anything creative was concerned, very few marks!

In four English exercise books I found only two pieces of genuinely creative work (ie stories – in those days nobody seemed to consider that children might try to write their own poetry!).  Only two stories which gave rein to the imagination.  I know my mother once said she didn’t have any imagination – maybe it was because she’d been given no chance to develop one.  All the other pieces of work were obviously exercises, probably copied down from the board, or from a book, or factual essays - beautiful to look at, but with no encouragement to be creative. 

I had thought that since we are, theoretically, so much more enlightened today, children would have far more opportunities to produce original creative work.  When I was at school in the sixties, although we were expected to use correct grammar, spelling and punctuation, we were also allowed the freedom to write stories about whatever interested us..  And when I was teaching in the late sixties and seventies there was plenty of emphasis on creative work of one sort or another.  Nowadays, however, with all the current emphasis on strange expressions like “fronted adverbials” being apparently essential for passing SATS tests, what space is left for creative work?  Clearly the technical aspects of grammar and spelling now take precedence over everything else.  Of course they are important, but they should help with creative work, not replace it.  This seems to me to be taking a backwards step, rather than looking forward.

My teachers, like Sheena's in her post yesterday, loved their subject and inspired me – but then they weren’t expected to teach to the tests all the time.  Okay, we did have the dreaded 11 plus in my day, but that was all – no SATS tests from age 5 upwards. 

I can’t help remembering a talk I heard once given by a famous children’s writer (I’d better not name her for reasons that will become obvious.)  She said that when she was at primary school her teacher used to come in every Monday morning with a hangover (now you see why I’d better not mention any names!) and said, “Sit down and write a story.”  So every Monday morning the whole class did just that – and she, as a budding writer, absolutely loved it!  (Was it in fact this opportunity that made her into a writer?) Of course one shouldn’t recommend such a way of teaching, and my teachers were way too responsible to behave that way, but I know I’d have loved to spend a whole morning writing a story! 

Of course we can't blame it all on the schools, or on our unbeloved ex-Education Secretary.  There should be time and opportunity for creativity at home, too - and in many cases they do.  But as comedian Jenny Éclair once said, all children should by law have a chance to be bored, because it was out of boredom that inspiration, imagination and creativity came – and I do agree.  How good it would be if after school and during their holidays children no longer had to worry about homework and tests, but instead had time and space to come up with new and creative ideas for amusing themselves.  This would surely be more useful for life, and would give their imaginations a chance to flourish.

SPAG, SATs and other Horrible Things - by Emma Barnes

This post is an expanded version of one that I wrote a few days ago for GirlsHeartBooks.  In particular there is new section on "Where is the evidence?" for the current approach.

 

If I'm looking a bit pained, not to mention puzzled, it's because I'm staring into my computer trying to do some of the questions that 10 and 11 year olds were doing for their SATS test papers this year. 

If you didn't do SATS yourself, you might want to take a look .  See how you do. 

 I'm a writer, so you'd think I would find these questions about the English language pretty easy.  Not so.  Sad to say I have never heard of a "subordinating conjunction", to take but one example.  And do you know what?  It hasn't exactly held me back so far. 

Ah, but that's because I write creative, airy-fairy stuff, I can hear you say.  Children's fiction.  I can even get away with starting this paragraph with "Ah". 

Think again.  I was once a civil servant.  I wrote briefings, letters, minutes and even politicians' speeches.  (I hope my writing was better than some of the stuff that comes out of government departments.)  I also went to graduate school, and not to study creative writing either, but political science. 

Actually, I'm not even against teaching grammar.  I didn't learn much of it in school (it wasn't fashionable then) and it would have been helpful when learning a foreign language later.  Also, some children enjoy a more formal approach to English. 

But like a lot of writers (and teachers and parents and - I'm guessing, because nobody seems to ask them - children) I think all this testing has gone too far.  The worst thing is, I can't see the link between the kind of tasks that children are being asked to do and actually improving their literacy in any meaningful way.  Meanwhile, a lot of truly valuable things - such as actual reading and writing - are being squeezed out. 

 And what's taking their place? SPAG! Now how bad can that be? Sounds like it's short for spaghetti, right, and everyone loves spaghetti.

But no, SPAG is actually short for Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar, and in its current form many children probably feel it was dreamt up purely as an instrument of torture!

 On visits to schools, I meet too many stressed teachers and children, who are being forced to concentrate on SPAG and other SATS prep when they could be doing something more interesting - like actual reading and writing - instead.  When I do workshops, children write down their versions of the stories that we have invented.  In the process, they are practising description, narrative, dialogue, setting, sentence construction and many other important things.  They are also having fun.  What saddens me is that they often have little chance to do this kind of writing at school.  Something is going very wrong.

 I'm not the only writer who thinks this.  In fact, children's writers as a whole have said that they think SATS are actually damaging children's writing.  For example:

• Read about the views of the Society of Authors here.
• Here's a letter condemning SATS whose signatories include writers Philip Pullman, Michael Rosen and Alan Gibbons.
• Here's a piece by writer Anne Rooney showing that the rules for using exclamation marks given to primary children are plain wrong.
• Here's another piece she wrote about Wow Words.
• Here's a post by Nicola Morgan on grammar in the current tests.
• Here's a post by writer C.J. Busby on why the current approach is actually detrimental to children's writing.
• Here's a post by Michael Rosen about his son's SPAG homework - his blog also has many examples of the illogicalities of the current tests.

As I've said, I'd actually like to know more grammar.  Sometimes I'm not certain which version of a sentence is correct.  But do you know what?  It's not that hard - I just look it up.

My Trusty Grammar Guide

What you can't just look up is language itself.  To be a fluent reader and writer, there is no substitute for practice.  You can give children endless rules to learn.  But they won't be able to read and write well unless they read and write regularly.  If they do, then most likely their grammar will be correct most of the time anyway.

 This requires time, and access to books.  So why not concentrate on those things rather than dreaming up ever more bizarre and convoluted tests?

Where's the evidence?

What I increasingly wonder about it where is the evidence for the current approach to teaching English?

If you go to a doctor, and are prescribed treatment, you tend to hope that there is some kind of evidence - based on research - that lies behind the choice of that treatment.  In fact in the UK there is an entire agency, NICE, which exists to look at particular medical treatments, review the evidence supporting them, and advise doctors on the best ways of treating various conditions.

You would think that educational policy - prescribing the way children are taught in school - would also be based on some kind of evidence.  Especially as it is constantly changing - placing additional burdens on the teachers and children who have to adjust.

Is there evidence that the approach taken at the moment is actually effective?  Does it produce more literate children - able to read and write more fluently, to cope better with the demands of their high school eduction?  Are they more likely to possess the literacy skills they need in adult life?

If there is such evidence, I'd love to see it.

By contrast, there is a huge amount of evidence that reading for pleasure is hugely beneficial to children's educational attainment - not only their literacy, but across the board.  This research regularly appears, and is international in scope.  Here's a link to just one such study - there are many more.

But what are the government doing to respond to this evidence?

I'm sure they would respond that they are not trying to deter reading for pleasure.  But they don't exactly seem to be going out of their way to encourage it, either.  Regional School Library Services - whose role it is to support schools - are closing.   The Society of Authors has campaigned for every school to have a library (every prison must have a library by law, but schools don't have to) - but so far without success.  With so many public libraries closing too (a truly national scandal) many primary children do not have access to the range of books they need to turn them into readers.

Furthermore, there is only so much time available.  The increasing focus on tests and SPAG inevitably squeezes out library time, quiet reading, the shared "read aloud" class novel.  Money spent on SATS revision guides cannot be spent on books for the school library.

Yes, I wish I'd learnt more grammar - but not the way it's being taught now.  Not at the expense of so much else.  In the end I did pretty well in that test.  That's because I've always been a reader and a writer. That's what I'd like to see children doing - learning to become lifelong readers.

There is a lot more to writing and reading than knowing a "subordinating conjunction" when you see it. As a first step - go and pick up a good book instead. 

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• Emma Barnes writes funny, contemporary fiction for children - for more information see her web-page.
• Her latest book, Wild Thing Goes Camping, is the third in her series about the naughtiest little sister ever.