Testing in schools: Who does it benefit?

[shinytheelf]

This has come from a discussion me and Simon were having over MSN.

Now, as I'm sure you're all aware, in primary and high schools, nowadays, kids do 4 main tests. These are SATS Key Stage 1, 2 and 3, and of course, GCSEs.

Now, maybe these tests aren't as tough anymore, but it could be argued that it is cruel to put kids as young as 7 under that kind of pressure, but unfortunately, the goverment makes it mandatory for all kids to take these tests.

This debate however, is not about the fairness or unfairness of tests in general, as whilst me and Simon discussed this, a thought popped into my head.

Who actually needs this information anyway?

Do the people who take them themselves need it, maybe future employers or even the government. Your pick.

Note: Now I'm remaining impartial here, maybe with a small bias, because everytime I post in Debates, a certain "Master debater" comes and smashes my argument to pieces. Whilst not a bad thing, it is rather humiliating. Thus, here I am not giving my point of view, unless requested

[Nuclear Spoon]

I was under the impression they tell the schools how the kids are doing etc., so they can be put into higher/lower sets. They receive the same education either way, but it makes it easier for the teachers.

[sirch]

Apparently the Year 9 SATS English paopers are meant t be more difficult than the GCSE English papers, (according to an English Teacher) though I don't know how true that is!

Back to the point, the SATS were meant to be scrapped sometime soon aswell. Unfortunatly not before I did them :nana:

[Smidge91]

I'll be doing my Yr 9 SATS in three weeks, and obviously I agree that there's no point in them. GCSEs? yes. A-Levels? yes. But we also have these "CATS" in year 7, which as far as I know, haven't helped anyone at all. They even do SATS in year 2 (6/7 yrs old) which is a disgrace really. The tests should at least be done secretly so kids aren't put under any pressure because they are unaware of being tested.

[Scrumpopolis]

I think a lot of people are being too sensitive about everything.

Me and my two sisters did the 11+. My elder sister and I passed and went to a grammar school, whilst my younger sister failed and went to a Comprehensive School. We were talking about the other week and none of us even remember our 11+, so I doubt it was as traumatising as some people claim it is.

I believe testing is important as people do have different abilities and finding out who is good at what is important, because if I had just been sent to the closest secondary school and not the one that I was able to get a place in with my 11+ result, I'm pretty sure I would not be in university at the minute, I probably wouldn't have even stayed on for A-levels, whereas if my sister had went to the school I had she probably wouldn't have been able to cope with the workload and would probably do worse in her GCSEs than she will at the school she's at.

I however do not believe in the merit of tests like key stage threes, what wre they? Just an excuse to tell kids that "this is the most important year of your school lives" (I heard that every year since P6) when really no employer cares about them and the school doesn't even really care about them, I don't even remember what I got in mine.

[Zweee]

No tests in schools are really that important. Maybe A levels. But the only really important tests you will ever do are your finals at university, that is what you future employers will look at.
Though yes it is kinda cruel to put kids through test after test, they wont remember. I dont remember my 9+ or my 11+ or my GCSE's, just about remember AS and A level, but meh, showed how much i cared i guess.

[sirch]

I'll be doing my Yr 9 SATS in three weeks, and obviously I agree that there's no point in them. GCSEs? yes. A-Levels? yes. But we also have these "CATS" in year 7, which as far as I know, haven't helped anyone at all. They even do SATS in year 2 (6/7 yrs old) which is a disgrace really. The tests should at least be done secretly so kids aren't put under any pressure because they are unaware of being tested.

I did them last year and there not that difficult. Apart from the irrelivant Shakesperian English test which has no use!

The SATS are supposed to be marks for the teachers to see if there teaching the the subject and items in it. There also meant to get you focused for GCSE's which are 2 years later! So really there is no point in them

[Smidge91]

Apart from the irrelivant Shakesperian English test which has no use!
That's true, it's not like you'll be turned down for a job because you don't know how Macbeth's attitude changes between acts 2 and 5, is it?

[Ringodadog]

I go to a private grammar school so I don't have to do SATs ( :p ). We still do GCSEs however. If SATs were important, everyone would have to do them.

Year 2 SATs are ridiculous. I remember doing mine, they were easy, but that's not the point. How can you assess a six year old?

[JoeyM]

I remember both my Year 2 and Year 6 sats. I got level 4 and Level 6's all the way through. They were about as traumatising as a ham sandwich.
Personaly i think it benefits the school, because if more kids are going into that school and getting higher marks, they'll be seen as a good school, thus earning them more students and with more students the goverment has to give them more money.
It doesn't benefit the students apart from the revising before hand, but name me one person who revised before there KS1 sats? so they should go out of the window. I suggest keep the KS2 sats and scrap the KS1/3 sats. Obviously keep GCSE and A levels though.

[Disgruntledgoat]

I think the only problem I see with testing kids in school is that the rntire year is then taken up by spoonfeeding exam technique.

For me, years 10 and 11 were only concerned with finding out the questions were likely to come up and how to answer them. Also what the examiner wants and lots of stuff one xam technique.

Where's the education there?

[Meadow]

Hello ladies.

I'm in a private school (guff guff) so I don't have to do SATs anymore. However, my dad works in secondary education (he's a head of English) and is firmly of the belief that most teachers have - SATs do NOT exist to test pupils, but to test teachers. They are just ways for the government to make sure the teachers are teaching the right stuff that the children need to know, according to them.

You're not going to get a job based on your SATs. They mean nothing. All they do is let the government know how 'good' your teachers are. The system is also a shambles, but we won't go into that.

[Cheeky Prophet]

Who actually needs this information anyway?

Hmm. Quite an odd debate. I guess it would depend on the test, wouldn't it?

I know in the states, a lot of the grades from the standardized test scores would determine the amount of financial support the school would get the following year from the state (for me, it was Texas). We were told that the school would get more money if we did better. Many of my teachers were adamantly against this, though. Most of them felt that it became a system of "teaching to the test." In that way, we weren't taught for the sake of learning what was best, we were taught to learn what we needed to know for the tests. Standardized testing is fundamentally flawed in that sense, but that's not the debate, I guess.

The information from the tests is also used show which schools need to improve in which areas. They show the parents of the students (and the students themselves) what they need to focus on in order to improve. They show the government where there are flawed school systems, and what they need to concentrate on to improve. Test scores are also used for admission into universities and other programs, where there needs to be a discriminator between applicants.

I don't know where the future employers part comes in because as far as I know, unless they're looking at your last year or 2 in uni, they don't care how you did on stupid tests when you were younger. Perhaps if you just graduate high school and you want to join the marines or something, they'll look at it, but it's not going to count for much.

[Darkscull]

i didn't do the year 2 SATS test, they weren't complusory until i was about 9.

the year 6 SATS were are to give your secondary school an overview of how well you do at school, and contribute to national statistics about how well children are doing.
no one gets stressed about them unless they have pushy parents that think it's the be all end all of their childs life.
i didn't even revise for year 6 sats, i don't know of anyone doing so actually.

CATS tests are IQ tests, and so have nothing to do with anything

year 9 SATS were to put us into groups for GCSE (although the English ones were mixed ability groups, for no conceivable reason) and again contribute to national statistics.

GCSE's are very important if you're not going on to 6th form. and moderately important if you are (you usually need 5 Cs), A levels are only really important if you're gonna go to uni afterwards.

there's nothing traumatic about them, but they do have purpose.

[renatzu]

New York State is the standardized testing capital of the world, so I have a nice long history of with these tests. In elementary school I took the IOWA (twice), COGAT (also twice), and ELA exams. In middle school I had to take the ELA (again) as well as a set of "Achievement tests" in every subject. Now remember on all these tests I never saw my grade. I suppose they were used to determine which schools get more financial aid from the state.

Then in high school it gets worse. NY requires every student to complete a series of regents exams to graduate. Math (2), science (3), English, History (2), and foreign language. The only good thing about these is that most teachers use them as a final exam grade for the course, and the regents are incredibely easy. But again, who needs this information? I don't know. It might be used by the state for financial aid, but do they really need 9 tests?

On the other hand, it's not like these were traumatizing. The tests in elementary and middle school carried no pressure at all. The regents are treated as an ordinary final exam. The only truly traumatizing test is the SAT (different from the English SAT). Your score on that test is one of the most important things colleges look at. Way too much emphasis is placed on that test, but that's another matter.

New York State needs to tone it down. You do not need to test kids every year from the time they are 7 to the time they are 17 to determine how their school is doing. I'm sure they could get the same information from half the tests.

[JonathanEx]

Here's my take on it all*:
*does not mean 'take' is on 'all'.
Year 2 SATs: ....you're in year two! That just seems pathetic. Year TWO. I don't know how difficult they are on the kids so hey thats all folks.
Year 6 SATs: End of primary school.... meh, not too bad. It is the primary/secondary transition...
Year 9 SATs: Someone please tell me the point? I could have spent more time focussing for more important GCSEs.
Tests my school does in years 7/8: Takes too much time out of lessons for focus on revision and stuff. And the tests. Most the stuff is never properly examined until Year 10/11 for GCSEs anyway! No need to take a week off timetable and focus ages on preparing for them, can be done in lessons.
Year 10 GCSE Preps (my school): I could be working on coursework, or the actual work to learn. Though, one set of GCSE mocks isn't too bad...
Year 11 GCSE Mocks (my school): Yeah. Making the other exams pretty much 'mock mocks'. In two years, I'll have effectivly done 3 sets of written paper exams... uh huh.
GCSE English Written Coursework: 3/5 pieces are old rubbish. One is shakespeare, and others are PRE-1914 Poetry/Prose. Might want to learn about how language is today maybe? Write about pieces of writing people these days might give a care about? Personal Writing and Responce to Media (hate my teacher - it's movies of Shakespeare for us >.>) aren't much to that idea....
JonathanEx: Doesn't know what he's talking about anymore and probably lost his idea around the 2nd line.

[Meadow]

GCSE English Written Coursework: 3/5 pieces are old rubbish. One is shakespeare, and others are PRE-1914 Poetry/Prose. Might want to learn about how language is today maybe? Write about pieces of writing people these days might give a care about?

Wow.

Just wow.

[ska wars]

when sitting my gcse exams i considered the testing and what it meant and then thought whats the point, im sitting here waisting my life. why are they doing this? so they can compare everyone to everyone else. These tests might well test your ability to learn facts, but they ignore important things like improvement and effort. Also, they cannot accurately reflect anyones intelligence as someone may be having a bad day, or know everything about a subject except the answers to the few questions on the test that day.

[Roxsie]

As exams may mean you end up with a safety net incase you fail your A2's but it is a long course squeezed into a short time.

A2's are worthwhile but they're a short course stretched into a long time.

Personally i'd prefer to return to the old system of two years and then you take your A levels as the stress of AS is outrageous. That said i'm doing my A2's in 7 weeks and i'm stressed to the max already - feeling totally underprepared and lashing out on any and everyone.

The whole point of exams is that children and teens suffer as much as adults did. It's a mass masochistic experience.

[eleanor]

Besides the aspects already mentioned in this thread - GCSEs and A-levels benefit employers, as well as students who have an externally-assessed benchmark of how well they have learned what was required for their examinations (however, I do think GCSEs and A-levels are getting easier - I'm shocked at what gets a B at A-level these days*).

SATs benefit the league table compilers, the schools who have good enough results that they can mention their performance in their prospectus, and prospective parents who want some way to tell one school from the next in terms of the standards of their teaching.

when sitting my gcse exams i considered the testing and what it meant and then thought whats the point, im sitting here waisting my life. why are they doing this?
Good GCSEs will get you onto good higher education courses, vocational courses, apprenticeships etc. They're there to get you onto the next rung of the ladder. I assume from your post that you're not interested in higher education right now - fair enough, but bear in mind that not making an effort at GCSE will mean you have to make far more of an effort once you leave school to get employers to notice you. And if you try hard and get good results, then the door is open should you change your mind with regards to A-levels or university etc.

editedit

As exams may mean you end up with a safety net incase you fail your A2's but it is a long course squeezed into a short time.

A2's are worthwhile but they're a short course stretched into a long time.
Hmmm - I don't remember noticing any difference. If anything, A2s felt like more of a challenge because everything was more final - no <x> number of resits the way there was at AS level. I think what you're noticing is the big change from GCSE to AS - so you're getting used to that on top of doing all the work, but in reality AS and A2 are pretty much the same.

i'm doing my A2's in 7 weeks and i'm stressed to the max already - feeling totally underprepared and lashing out on any and everyone.
Yeah, tell me about it - I'm graduating uni this year. My exams start in about a month, and you can't resit in your final year... DO NOT WANT. But at least that's it after the next few weeks.

*My mother is an English teacher so I've seen some of her marking and the kids' predicted grades :-/

[emeralde]

I sort of remember my year 2 SATS.. I remember going into school one morning and being presented with an exam about the RNLI, and thinking 'what the heck is this'. Then doing two questions, followed by staring at the ceiling.

I think the year 6 SATS are a good idea, as they assess the whole of your primary school education. I firmly believe the year 9 SATS were a total waste of time and energy. It was a whole year of 'these are the most important exams you have ever sat'... yeh, but they dont matter to anything.

I believe that GCSEs and A-Levels and everything else which is a formal qualification are worthwhile. But I dont think half the stuff you learn in compulsary subjects is important. For example, Physics today, we learnt how to tell how old a rock is. A rock. Do I honestly care how old a rock is. Maths today, 'quadratic equations'... im not even going to go there.

[original sunrise]

my own thoughts ( experiences) is, if school is so boring they have to pay children to go, what makes them think testing them is going to help thier future.

The subjects are outdated, knowing henry the eights life story never got me a job, nor did RE, or geography.

Where as plumbing, carpentry, electrical engineering, mechanics would have.

All these tests are just a cover up to make parents think the government is doing something, when they are not.

A child should be given choices from as young as 7( reflecting thier age) those choices are given each year.
The subjects the child sticks with through school will be the childs interest and enjoyment and they would excel in and gain self confidence and belief.

After 14 years you take stock and you build on what they have shown todate.

sorry ive just rambled .
slap hand.

[Luna]

I'm in year 10, so mid-way between my SAT's (pointless and easy) and GCSE's. Having read your opinions i agree with the large majoritory; what am i going to need a knowledge of MacBeth for?. Many subjects i take at school are completly useless: social studies for example. Me and my two friends (were all on the same level at school, all got A's in our mocks etc etc etc) did fuck all during the half term, then at then end of the course we took the 'exam' and all got 85%+. It's like they feel a need to teach us that racism is wrong, or that there is more than one religion in the world. No, really?

I want to be a journalist, and i've been told i have talent. However, out of the 7 or so pieces of coursework we have done in english so far, 6 of them have been essays, which i'm not particularly good at (B/A grade). The one creative piece we did was a review of Saving Private Ryan , which has not been marked, but the comments on the draft were very positive (others were told to look at my review for pointers). Again in the mocks, B in the English Language section (although i did accidently miss a question), A* in the English Literature section (27/30). Forgive me for possibly being naive, but will a newspaper looking for a sports writer or a reviewer look at how well i did writing a creative review or match write-up, or look at my analytical skills when it comes to language used in Romeo & Juliet?

[flamelitface]

I think the SATS would be fine if teachers did not pressure people into making them think they were really important. GCSE's are just a ticket into college I feel, and A levels a ticket to university.

Bearing this in mind the GCSE's are broad, and it isn't until A levels or possibly degree level that you can specialise in what you want to do and the degrees are what people will most likely look at.

I don't think this should happen with English, as it is almost an art, and can be learned best through reading rather than getting self taught and jobs should be offered on examples of your writing rather than a qualification.

I don't know if GCSE's and A levels are getting easier, but all I can say is: Maths and Chemistry are certainly not easy at A level.

[renatzu]

A child should be given choices from as young as 7( reflecting thier age) those choices are given each year.
The subjects the child sticks with through school will be the childs interest and enjoyment and they would excel in and gain self confidence and belief.

After 14 years you take stock and you build on what they have shown todate.
Do you have the same interests now that you had when you were 7? Most people don't. I, on the other hand, do. I wanted to be a rocket scientist, and now I want to be an aerospace engineer. Unfortunately, you just can't teach a 7 year old rocket physics. Children aren't expected to think about their careers, and it should stay that way. Children already put up with too much stress for such a young age.

People tend to undervalue their free public education. It teaches you something called "not being stupid". Imagine where you'd be without all you've learned in school. It teaches you about the world around us. It teaches us about the past, and how humanity got to where it is. It teaches us basic social skills. It teaches us how to read and write. It teaches us how to do math. Do you realize how often you use basic math during your day.

And it starts specializing at the right time. I don't know about British schools, but I know that Italian high schools allow you to apply to certain schools which specialize in different fields. In American high schools, high school is when you have control over your schedule and can look into the subject you enjoy. If you're in to math and science, you can take that higher level physics course, or you can take college calculus, or statistics. If you like literature, you can take the Shakespeare course or Writer's Workshop. If you like Social Studies, you can take Euro history and economics.

Can you imagine having to choose a career at 7? Do you realize how many police officers we'd have?

[Discodoris]

Those of you who are mocking the skills you are being taught in exams are missing what an employer thinks of your qualifications. There is virtually no way on earth that an education system could teach you what you need in a particular job. What those qualification results tell a prospective employer is your capacity to learn, amass information and interpret and re-present that information. From your subject choice, they gain an understanding of your interests and how that fits with their objectives and specialisations.

With regard to SATS, they should be testing your innate abilities and how they have changed through time, in order that you can be assisted in your educational choices. However, I join the ranks of cynics here and agree that what the government does is use them in order to try to judge whether teachers are doing a good job or not- which is a load of tosh. There are many many different influences on how and when people learn. Fortunately I was educated well before the introduction of SATS and it did me no harm whatsoever...

[TX_101]

I don't know if GCSE's and A levels are getting easier, but all I can say is: Maths and Chemistry are certainly not easy at A level.

On the theme of exams getting easier, I recently found my dad's O-level maths book from about 30-35 years back.

It did seem to have more advanced topics in it than I covered in GCSE maths (supposedly the modern equivalent of O-level) specifically things like Calculus (Deriviation, Integration etc.) and more Geometry than is in the GCSE nowadays. Basically, stuff that I'm now learning as part of my AS level.

One thing I noticed it didn't have though, is it had very little on sequences/series and pretty much nothing whatsoever on statistics, which was a prominant part of the mathmatics GCSE. So perhaps it's not that exams are getting 'easier' per-se, perhaps it's just that they're covering a larger selection of topics at a slightly lower level.

Just some food for thought for you all. :)


Back to the subject at hand, however, there is a point to be made about how children deal with exams - if it's unfair to put children as young as 7 under 'stress' (I never even realised they were exams at that age, nevermind got myself stressed about them) then what is there to say that it will be any easier by the time they get to 11, 14, or even 16 ?

Surely without the earlier practice of exam technique and coping with the stress involved, they will be much, much worse off in later exams. No ?

I'm not too certain myself, as exams have personally never been a problem for me, and they aren't something that I normally get myself stressed out over.

[Luna]

I know i was made to feel under unrealistic amounts of pressure for my SAT's, considering they go for barely anything except setting.

GCSE English Written Coursework: 3/5 pieces are old rubbish. One is shakespeare, and others are PRE-1914 Poetry/Prose. Might want to learn about how language is today maybe? Write about pieces of writing people these days might give a care about? Personal Writing and Responce to Media (hate my teacher - it's movies of Shakespeare for us >.>) aren't much to that idea....

Totally agree, i hope if i go in for being a journalist employers won't base their desicion on whether i can deciphire the underlying meaning of some 300 year old french poem.

[renatzu]

Surely without the earlier practice of exam technique and coping with the stress involved, they will be much, much worse off in later exams.
That's true. Since New York State has had me take so many fucking standardized tests in my lifetime, by the time I got to the ones that mattered in high school, I was used to it.

[Hiddenpower]

It's not just about the subject your learning though, throughout school you're meant to learn how you learn best (metacognition: go look it up on wikipedia) and take advantage of it. It's been proven that constant testing ensures you learn better so testing at say the end of modules etc. is probably better for you than you might think. (I think I'm pretty much saying what doris is saying). There's also whether you're in learning for a job or for your own satisfaction, I understand that you may not be learning stuff that you feel you need, but like I said, it's not just the substance of courses it's learning about yourself as well.