Examine the situation

It's been rejected as nonsense by Labour and the Tories, as you'd expect, but there genuinely are too many tests in schools. The General Teaching Council's call for SATS to be scrapped for 7, 11 and 14 year olds had scorn poured upon it from a great height by ministers last week, largely on the grounds that they're the main basis for publishing school league tables, which parents apparently "greatly value". Not sure why though. If I was a parent, rather than greatly valuing them I'd probably be more concerned with wiping the saliva from my chin as I sit agog and incredulous at the sheer revelatory material before me. Grammar schools tend to come out on top! Schools in affluent areas filled with middle class kids tend to score higher than inner-city schools with sink estates for catchment areas! Good grief, somebody pinch me; these revelations are just too much.

My year group was the first to take SATS when they were introduced in 1991. We were the guinea pigs. I vividly remember being ushered into the school hall aged 7, taken behind a curtain by my teacher and whipped into submission (does this sound dodgy?) by a series of verbal questions. It turned out not to be too traumatic an experience but I was a bit worried beforehand. From then on exams were like a crescendo of concern. I got gradually more worried with each set that came along, and increasingly frustrated by the way each set were billed as being more important than the last. Of course exams are important for monitoring the basic level of kids' performance, but when there's too much focus on them (as there is now) it's dangerous, especially pre-GCSE. Genuine education is lost amid the clamour for drilling information into kids so they've covered everything that might pop up in exams. Past papers, model answers, pieces of card with little bullet points written on them... it's all bullshit. It's just one example of how the modern education system stifles free thought and creativity. If you train kids as puppets, you're bound to end up with a load of puppets.