Jayne Dowle: Pointless tests that kill off any love of learning

She hates her primary school and can’t wait to leave. I’m not surprised. Her instinctive love of learning is being ruined.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools, has spoken out in support of SATs. I take his point that we need to need to bring our children’s educational achievement rapidly up to speed in order to raise standards.

However, I would like to contend that making 10-year-old girls cry is not the way to go about it. These are children, not robots. Doesn’t he realise that his uncompromising approach is causing psychological damage? The Let Our Kids Be Kids campaign organised the day of action in protest at pupils being “over-tested, over-worked and in a school system that places more importance on test results and league tables than children’s happiness and joy of learning”.

I want to say to those parents it doesn’t get any better. Three or four years ago, when my son was being sent home with practice Year Six SATs papers, he would screw them up in frustration and run and hide at the bottom of the garden. I tried to guide him, but I recall it taking me two hours to help him complete an observational writing exercise about a circus. What chance did he have on his own? In the end I told his teacher that it was too much for him and to stop giving him papers.

When Jack left primary school in Year Six, his SATs results were a mixture of 2s and 3s – when to reach the required standard, they should have been 5s. By this point though both Jack and I had lost all faith in the system. He was reassessed as soon as he got to secondary school, given help to improve his literacy, and now, in Year Nine, his academic confidence has never been higher. We’re aiming for five GCSEs including maths and English. This will be a huge achievement for Jack. And it’s his personal best that matters in the end, not the reputation of the school.

To be honest, I like the way Lizzie is taught maths. It is thorough and clear and makes a lot more sense than the muddled way I was instructed at school. It’s the approach to literacy which I entirely disagree with. My child is being asked to comprehend grammar and terms of reference which I don’t understand myself. I have a 2:1 degree in English Literature and Language from Oxford, and I write for a living every day. I also taught journalism and media at a university for the best part of a decade. You could put the thumb screws on me, and I still couldn’t tell you what a subordinating conjunction is. I’m not surprised that the phrase “fronted adverbial” has become the byword for teaching unions’ anger over grammar stifling creativity. And I don’t know what that means either.

More importantly, I’m also a parent. A concerned one. I’ve spoken to her class teacher, but all she does is show me graphs and charts which plot Lizzie’s “progress” against the rest of her cohort. For the record, it’s pretty good. We don’t need the evidence anyway. Every child in Lizzie’s class already knows exactly where they are in the pecking order, because their teacher drills it into them day after day. The stress this causes these children is incalculable. It knocks the confidence of the less able ones, and is surely setting the “top of the class” up for a fall once they get to secondary school and find themselves pitched against wider competition. So much for Sir Michael Wilshaw’s determination to ensure children are given a firm foundation at primary school.

At the last parents’ evening I attempted to make a gentle stand. I sat down and asked the teacher if she would tell me about Lizzie, share with me a few insights as to what she is like in class, and what passions and powers my daughter. Her teacher – clearly – was incapable of doing so. It’s not her fault. She is under orders from the headteacher, who is under orders from the Government, to get all the children in her care up to a certain standard. I bet she goes home crying at least once a week too. Her hand strayed to the pile of papers on the desk. She couldn’t help herself. Before I knew it, I was being indoctrinated once again with the intricacies of the “Sheffield system”, the assessment criteria which Lizzie’s school employs. I was so incensed, I’ve vowed to boycott parents’ evening from now on. Like those striking parents of the Let Our Kids Be Kids campaign, I must make my protest felt. My daughter’s future – and her mental health – could depend on it.