Four-year-old children to be tested in Reception!

[mystery]

Amber, I have a friend who 11 years later still goes on about her DDs agpar, even the DD herself mentions it now too.
If it wasn't for the fact she mentions it I would have forgotten what agpar was.

Testing in reception. Hmmm.
As mentioned it happens already, and in my own DDs experience, badly.
When asked questions by the teacher, she just shrugged her shoulders. She had known this teacher for less than 2 weeks and at the time was chronically shy.
The teacher assumed that my DD couldn't answer as opposed to wouldn't answer and as a result, with hindsight, I strongly suspect my DD was seen as 'nice but dim' by that teacher.

Bet they didn't involve parents very much in their useless testing did they - and the guidelines certainly said they should have done in the foundation stage profile assessment.

Something similar happened here, but it continued on through ks1. For example, they would not recognise the fact that dd could read pretty well by the end of reception - because she did not pick up the books in the reception classroom and go and show off her reading to the teacher. The teacher was pleasant but dim by my reckoning - bit like the view of your daughter Tinkers.


I asked one of the teachers at what point you could shrug off the legacy of the foundation stage scores on the school tracking system. She said the only way was to get level 3s at ks1 ( teacher assessed these days of course) Otherwise you would be expected to get level 4s and taught for level 4s right the way through.

So I was mighty relieved when we got a new teacher in year 2 who upped the ante and made some real progress with them - I could see at home that my child's maths and writing improved phenomenally. But we are back to rubbish again in year 3 with no measuring required for a few years now.

I know all the good reasons why testing is not ideal. But, in schools like ours, I think removing the requirement for ks1 assessments is not a good plan unless schools are expected somehow to have a thorough eye on progress by some other means. In the ideal world this testing would not be necessary but I don't know what would get a school like mine going otherwise. Plenty of schools would be better off without testing, but I do worry about the few ones like mine - some other way would be better there too but having some measures through testing is a cheap and cheerful way at least, despite its flaws.

[southbucks3]

With ds3 when reception monitoring began (ds1 and2 missed this joy) the teacher was fully aware that my boys are shy, and adjusted his scores accordingly. She showed me his pre-school assessment though, which said basically that they had no idea if he could talk, read or any of the spoken tests, as he never uttered a word!1

I do remember that one "initiative" was a board of achievements your child had done at home, which could also count towards achieving their assessment goals. The board was monopolized by a few parents telling us "little Billy" had played Dvorak"s New world symphony on his kazoo, or drawn a beautiful picture of a leaf. The rest of us (ie.normal parents) simply ignored the board, but if asked things like "can he use a knife and fork" told the truth accordingly, so she could tick or cross a box. Eventually teacher gave up and it was taken down.

I also distinctly remember ds3 and his partner in crime a little girl, stumbling and grumbling through their learning words to their teacher, even though they rattled them off at home. When we collared them after being given words yet again, when all their peers had progressed to books, my ds looked sheepish but the girl broke down under interrogation. "Well if you get all our words right, you have to read a whole book..."
Thus proving intelligence comes in many packages

[Amber]

The system you mention there, SB3, of withholding actual books until children knew all their 'sounds' is one of the most shameful episodes in recent English literacy teaching IMHO. Happily there is now a growing body of disquiet about the stranglehold synthetic phonics has on early language teaching in this country (away from home ATM so can't reference it) but whoever thought that you could motivate children to want to read by giving them strings of sounds to memorise had clearly listened to their own propaganda for far too long.

[scary mum]

I also distinctly remember ds3 and his partner in crime a little girl, stumbling and grumbling through their learning words to their teacher, even though they rattled them off at home. When we collared them after being given words yet again, when all their peers had progressed to books, my ds looked sheepish but the girl broke down under interrogation. "Well if you get all our words right, you have to read a whole book..."
Thus proving intelligence comes in many packages

This reminds me of DD in junior school. Every week they had 15 dreary spellings to learn and regurgitate in an test. When I asked why she kept getting some wrong as I knew she could spell them, she explained that if you got them all right you had to do 20 each week.

[southbucks3]

The system you mention there, SB3, of withholding actual books until children knew all their 'sounds' is one of the most shameful episodes in recent English literacy teaching IMHO. Happily there is now a growing body of disquiet about the stranglehold synthetic phonics has on early language teaching in this country (away from home ATM so can't reference it) but whoever thought that you could motivate children to want to read by giving them strings of sounds to memorise had clearly listened to their own propaganda for far too long.

Well quite...He was four at the time, and happy to read iggle piggle books, or number jacks, not by rote, but he would definitely just learn phonics and phonic books by rote. After three kids you learn all their devious little four year old ways. He could also follow complex Lego instructions, but apparently not count....x in that box!
Honestly if I had relied on teacher assessments in the early years I would have been in tears!

So any more testing that makes out that loud in your face kids are brilliant and the quiet, very shy kids as needing continuous assessment...which btw makes them retreat even more...is not welcome in my world. I find it frustrating enough that the brash characters inevitably get first choice in everything, get applauded for answering in class and rewarded for being attention seeking little wotsits, without further big ups via testing, which as they are four will inevitably be spoken.

[talea51]

Amber, I have a friend who 11 years later still goes on about her DDs agpar, even the DD herself mentions it now too.
If it wasn't for the fact she mentions it I would have forgotten what agpar was.

Testing in reception. Hmmm.
As mentioned it happens already, and in my own DDs experience, badly.
When asked questions by the teacher, she just shrugged her shoulders. She had known this teacher for less than 2 weeks and at the time was chronically shy.
The teacher assumed that my DD couldn't answer as opposed to wouldn't answer and as a result, with hindsight, I strongly suspect my DD was seen as 'nice but dim' by that teacher.

Snap!! (Except for the weird apgar friend)

Dd1's experience of baseline testing went something like this "count to 20, oh my goodness those other children are playing outside with the sandpit, can I go to, when can I stop this, oh that's black, no I really don't know what that colour is, I would like to play in the sandpit". Result, teacher tells me that my dd can count reliably to 20 whereupon I fell on the floor laughing.

Dd2's experience went something like this "can you tell me what colour this is?" (silence and stare from dd2), "can you count to 10?" (more silence and staring from dd2) Result, teacher believes my dd is "nice, but dim" which is a label that has stuck with her all the way from reception to year 3.

When what she really is, is terribly shy and lacking in self confidence.

[Cranleigh]

Agree, SouthBucks.

Our 'good mathematicians' are decided by 7 because 'you can always tell'. Perhaps they are right?

When it comes to times table etc the approach is child centred. Seen as a good thing by all. This means the children decide when they are comfortable enough to be tested, alert the teacher & progress through the levels accordingly as and when they display proficiency...

Agree with Mystery that levels should probably stay for reasons she cites.

I think they get to the appropriate level for their ability in the end but the system means cognitive bias abounds. Nothing is perfect.

[talea51]

It is hard to believe Clegg and Laws don't know the arguments against "high-stakes testing". Such tests narrow the curriculum and encourage unimaginative teaching.

Funnily enough we had a meeting for parents last year regarding SATS tests and our head teacher said almost exactly this. He is not keen on SATS and he feels that now that there are no longer SATS for Science in KS2, that science often takes a back seat in favour of maths or literacy.

I just had a conversation with dd1 regarding SATS. Being in year 6 they are now starting to feel a bit of pressure (from the teacher) with regard to their upcoming SATS next term. I explained to dd that, in my opinion, SATS are of no benefit to her. They are there so that the government can make some decision with regard to whether schools are teaching what they should be teaching (and even this is debatable) and they are there so that prospective parents can compare where schools are on league tables when they are making their choices for schools (which I completely disagree with but it's what people do).

She is a lot more relaxed about them now that she knows that they are not actually for her benefit.

Mystery, I fear that at our school there is also no way to throw off the assessment that was made in reception and I have an idea that my dd2 will be taught to level 4 all the way through simply because she's shy. She didn't get a speaking part in a recent class play because "she didn't volunteer for anything". Excellent. So only the children who are already confident to stand up in front of people and speak will get the opportunity to become more confident.

[southbucks3]

I put this quote on the end of any report requiring parent feedback that suggests that my ds1, who has not just shyness but severe communication anxiety, would do better if only he would talk! He spent his reception year "reading" singe word picture books, until they started proper writing...I will always remember him running out telling me how impressed his teacher was he could spell hippopotamus

http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/ ... 81cd4c.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


I am sure most of you with genuinely shy (not coy) family will be familiar with the quote, although Steven Hawkins is not shy but obviously unable to speak, it fits perfectly for those with communication anxiety, or social anxiety too.

I only wish I was brave enough to march into my son's year 8 form and stick it on the wall, as he is having a hard time of school at the moment, bless him.

[mystery]

If I had another child I would spend all my time at home with them from the age of zero training them whenever I asked a question to put up their hand and get right in front of me, look me in the eye, and if necessary do a few jumps up and down and shout me, me, me too.

The other important part of the training is to make it very clear to the teacher when something is too easy and say so loud and clear, and then misbehave frequently when not provided with new things. At our school there is usually one naughty child per year who is allowed to progress way ahead of the others while several others are bored and meek.