Education Secretary’s comments on SATS

sue glover

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-36703784


Read the article if you fancy but essentially Nicky Morgan has said ‘Don’t panic Mr Mainwaring!’

The tests have been made tougher and Mrs Morgan says lower results should not be interpreted as a decline in performance by pupils.

“They simply cannot be compared directly,” says Mrs Morgan.
She’s right, the results can’t be compared with what has gone before. The new Curriculum is way harder than the previous version and includes much which is really hard to rationalise as age-appropriate.
 If only I were Education Secretary, I would wish to see the subjunctive removed,for example. Immediately, I would demand clarity about fronted adverbials and why fronted adjectival phrases were less important.  The rule book would be changed regarding the active and passive voices. 
See what I did there? If you did, well done, have a house points and then translate it into ‘sensible speak’. If not don’t worry, linguists disagree about many of the things your children are being taught as absolute fact and it’s quit clear that deploying certain techniques just sounds clunky and unpleasant.
I could get into the maths curriculum and algebra for 10 year-olds but I don’t want to bore you too much.


Bottom line is, if your child took SATs this year, you will almost certainly have no idea how s/he performed compared to an older sibling or friend. Mrs Morgan hasn’t been able to come up with any sensible way to explain it to you, so you are going to have to rely on that good old favourite – your child’s teacher. The teacher won’t be able to answer some of your questions, after all if the Ultimate Boss is on the BBC news saying   “I don’t know what the results will look like yet”, you can’t expect poor old ‘Sir’ to be any more in the know. But that teacher will know something (the most important something of all) Mrs Morgan doesn’t know…your child.  The teacher will know how hard s/he tried, how effectively s/he worked, what type of learner s/he is and what progress s/he has made. 


As for Mrs Morgan’s suggestion  that you should  “see the results as what they are – a reflection of how well children this year have performed against a new curriculum”   the reality is the results will reveal way more about the effectiveness of the curriculum itself. Is it fit for purpose? Personally, I am looking forward to the national data being published (yes I am that sad person who finds data fascinating- but only when it is used as a tool to refine best practice) and hearing what comes next. 

In the meantime, your children are the first to have had to deal with this and the deserve a great big round of applause for doing so.

Well done year 6; I salute you!




Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *