Heads point to ‘limitations’ of new spelling test

A NEW grammar, spelling and punctuation test being sat by thousands of pupils for the first time misses the purpose of communicating, according to a head teachers’ union.
By The Newsroom
Published 15th May 2013, 01:01 BST

The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) believes that assessing a child’s portfolio of work is a better indicator of their ability to use technical English than the new test of primary pupils which started yesterday.

Russell Hobby, general secretary of NAHT, said: “The teaching of grammar, spelling and punctuation is vital. It is important that children learn to communicate clearly and – as far as possible – elegantly; knowledge of the rules of language helps them to do so. We should not, however, confuse testing with teaching.

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“The new test focuses on the knowledge of grammar in the abstract; it tells us nothing about how someone uses that knowledge to communicate.

“Just because you can circle an adverb in a multiple choice test does not mean you know how to use an adverb appropriately. We already have a better test, which is the assessment of the student’s portfolio of work from across year six.

“Why limit ourselves to whether someone can spot an adverb, when we can examine how they use them?

“Why limit ourselves to the spellings of 20 words, when we can look at the spellings of thousands?