Report on the Impact of Testing
Posted: Thu May 19, 2016 8:16 am
A first class report on the effects of summative testing on motivation. For anyone who says that being constantly assessed helps encourage children to learn, a skim through this might help inform your view. (Thanks M Rosen for drawing attention to this).
The EPPI centre, which carried out this review, is highly esteemed and actually rather in fashion with the Government in many ways, so it will be interesting to see whether this gets any political and media attention. Though I fear I know the answer already. Given that only last month academics were threatened with withdrawal of funding if they published against Government policy, I can't imagine Nicky Morgan standing up to blast this one from the rooftops.
http://tinyurl.com/summative-testing" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The conclusions (p70) are worth reading if you don't have time for anything else, particularly the policy ones. It is time to end the practice of constant high-stakes testing - it reduces motivation, puts undue pressure on teachers and misses the point of education. Please, please let someone listen to this before it is too late!
ETA just noticed that this is 14 years old! Michael Rosen posted it today and I didn't check the date.
Just goes to show that people have been saying this stuff for a long long time and no one has listened. The conclusions are still just as pertinent, if not even moreso.
The EPPI centre, which carried out this review, is highly esteemed and actually rather in fashion with the Government in many ways, so it will be interesting to see whether this gets any political and media attention. Though I fear I know the answer already. Given that only last month academics were threatened with withdrawal of funding if they published against Government policy, I can't imagine Nicky Morgan standing up to blast this one from the rooftops.
http://tinyurl.com/summative-testing" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The conclusions (p70) are worth reading if you don't have time for anything else, particularly the policy ones. It is time to end the practice of constant high-stakes testing - it reduces motivation, puts undue pressure on teachers and misses the point of education. Please, please let someone listen to this before it is too late!
ETA just noticed that this is 14 years old! Michael Rosen posted it today and I didn't check the date.
Just goes to show that people have been saying this stuff for a long long time and no one has listened. The conclusions are still just as pertinent, if not even moreso.