SATs not right?
The testing system in England is in danger of damaging children’s education, according to a recent report from the Children, Schools and Families parliamentary select committee.
As the BBC reports, 25 million papers are taken in an annual orgy of testing that, the committee argues, risks placing too much emphasis on too few types of test and on teaching to the test.
More damningly, the report states:
…that the single-level tests’ “one-way ratchet” system will lead to an “artificial” improvement in results, in which pupils will be “certified to have achieved a level of knowledge and understanding which they do not in truth possess”.
Barry Sheerman and his committee are stating, in part, that some types of national testing are circular - improvement in the tests is taken as validation of those tests and so students do more tests. We can’t really say if students have learned anything by the end of that process.
A key recommendation of the committee seems to be the that whilst testing per se is not damaging, the use of those tests to create schools performance table, is. The BBC piece notes the report argues that “…accountability should be based on a wider range of measures, including Ofsted reports.”
John Dunford, leader of the head teachers’ union ASCL expresses the frustration of many in the teaching profession with with the current profusion of tests, and how that information is used:
“The original purpose of examinations, to assess students’ progress, has become confused with school accountability and the performance management of teachers,”
The conclusions of the select committee and the opinions of the likes of Dr. Dunford we heartily agree with. This seems to boil down to an issue we’ve long recognised, and have had to take into account designing Maths-Whizz and in the valuable reports we put together for parents, students and teachers alike:
All you can say with honesty about a test is that it measures a student’s ability to take that test.
It sounds truistic, obvious, but when you think about it this argument is a dangerous one to follow to its extremes - after all, by what standards might we measure performance, what information is relevant to an understanding of ability and learning, if we take this statement at face value?
When students learn with Maths-Whizz animated exercises and test themselves with Maths-Whizz exam-style questions we know that there are two things at work:
- The student is, first, learning the subject - the basic maths he or she needs to develop educationally and to use in everyday life.
- Second, the student is learning the technique for answering the question, whether that involves knowing what to write, when, or learning which button to click.
When the second skill takes precendence over the first, the system has failed to measure knowledge or performance in any meaningful way.
Of course, for many students rote learning of technique can make up for a lack of understanding. You can know how to perform long division - and use that skill to good effect in everday life - without understanding why it works, or how. Likewise, I don’t need to know the inverse square law in order to understand that gravity keeps me sitting here.
But - and this is vital - if our testing system ends up valuing method over knowledge, by design or by accident, then we need to re-evaluate the testing system. If the method of SATs tests is all about how to answer SATS tests, then we have a problem.
We like to think Maths-Whizz gives students the tools and the confidence to take their maths learning beyond the computer screen. Parents tell us all the time that our exercises and exam-style questions are making their children do better in class. We would be failing in our jobs if it turned out that all Maths-Whizz students could do was answer Maths-Whizz questions; thankfully, the evidence shows anything but.
In the end, though, we know that no child is going to understand all the intricacies of maths just by logging into Maths-Whizz, just as no child is going to understand the implications of gravity by watching electronic apples fall from electronic trees. Everything our students learn has to have a life outside Maths-Whizz.