Todays announcement that Science SATs will be scrapped from 2010 seem to have taken some people by suprise, but following on from previous news over the past week, was it really unexpected?
For many years, 11 year old children have been tested in English, Maths and Science every May. These are the "core subjects" that the government has been focusing on. However, with the recent announcement of the review of the curriculum (The Rose Review) and news that science was no longer to be a core subject, why should it continue to be SAT tested?
What is a suprise however is that the Science SATs go, but in comes in teacher assessment for the subject. No other non-core subjects have been "teacher assessed" and reported on before, so why does science lose it core value, but retain assessing?
Worst case scenario; Imagine this future for education...
- ICT has been "upgraded" and made a core subject, so the government introduces teacher assessment, reporting results to LAs, and league tables appear within ICT, (they do realise that setting a standard nationwide ICT SAT would be impossible unless they set down guidlines for the hardware and software to use in schools).
- Once the science teacher assessments have been bedded in, the government begins to introduce teacher assessment in the other non-core subjects (they say this is so that everything is "brought into line with science", and LA reporting and league tables for those subjects begins.
- Not long after all Yr6 pupils in all subjects are being assessed, reported on and compared too (this causes teachers to abandon the job because of workload issues, but the government sees only the figures on paper and introduces assessment throughout ALL ages rapidly).
- The literacy / numeracy SATs remain for a while, until the government has got its APP project up and running - and then each child will have an APP profile for every subject throughout the curriculum.
- Once that is sorted, they adjust the teacher assessment in the non core subjects and rename it Non Core APP.
After all, if you want to reduce teachers workload, introduce more assessment. That's a logical way to think.
