By Gavin Mackintosh-

A Leeds primary school head teacher has banned its pupils from taking Sats exams, because too many children cried over them last year.

In an audacious show of power, Jill Wood from Little London Primary, foolishlysaid she was willing to put her job on the line by taking the decision not to run the controversial national tests this month.

Pupils at her school will instead be measured using alternative methods, such as on-going learning checks throughout the year, as well as less official assessments at the end of term. Her decision is understandable but foolish because she hasn’t got the authority to take such decisions on her own. If she feels the SATS tests are too difficult for her students, she should train the students properly for those tests, not take decisions into her hands.

Wood told reporters at The Yorkshire Evening Post.

“The country is spending billions on children’s mental health, so why are we putting them under pressure?” the school leader said.

“We just felt last year we had children sobbing in exams and it upset me so much, I just said ‘I can’t do this again’. They are a ridiculous, unnecessary strain.

“I’m in breach of my contract of employment, but I feel very passionately about it.”

Wood said she was not against assessment itself, she said she had made the decision not to run Sats because they made little sense when schools have free reign over how to measure performance during the rest of the year.

MEASUREMENT

She said: “If one school is measuring in bananas and the other is measuring in pineapples, how can we all sit standardized assessments?“Why do we test our children in May anyway? There is another two-and-a-half months of learning time,” she added. “Schools should be accountable, but there is a better way.” The SATS tests are set at a high standard, particularly in English, but many primary school teachers do not train their students well for these tests. Ongoing research by the eye of media.com in primary school education has found that primary school teachers generally do not have the right level of skills to bring the best out of their students. This is on top of the fact that students in many primary schools are generally not disciplined or hardworking at all.

The eye of media.com has had a look at last year’s Sat questions, and conclude that most primary school children are not academically trained well enough to prepare for them. Only those students with good quality tuition or who are hardworking can do well in those exams. The English test is particularly high and will only passed by students who read regularly, However, most primary school children are more interested in selfies and facebook than they are in learning anything.

STANDARD

The high standard of sats test call for schools to raise their own standards of teaching and preparation. Wood is wrong to breach her contract on grounds of sympathy for ‘crying’ students. Many primary school students passed the sats tests last year, which proves that much depends on the dedication of students and teachers in preparing for them.

Primary school children in many schools in the Uk don’t read nearly enough. A comparison between the work in most public primary schools and those of private primary schools reveals a lot. UK primary schools with good teachers and high developments

Better forms of teaching are necessary, and this headteacher was wrong to act as she pleases. Indeed, she has put her job on the line, and should be disciplined for it.

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• Date
  19th May 2017