Thursday 16 October 2008

No more testing for 14 year olds

So the big news throwing all sorts of people into flaps this week is the news that the government has decided, just like that, to scrap the national tests for Year 9 pupils. Previously only valuable as a threat to unruly 13 and 14 year olds, the tests were a major balls-up this year when the company responsible for administering and marking the tests just chucked them all into the bin or something like that.

Hooray, lots of teacher are yelling. Boo, some others are crying. And suddenly there are a flurry of emails from publishers and museums and theatres whizzing around saying, "Don't cancel us! Your pupils still need to learn stuff! They can come and visit our Mad Maths exhibition, or buy our "how to spell and write proper" study guides, or enjoy a performance from the Shakespeare troupe. You don't have to cancel just because there aren't any tests!"

And they've got a point, haven't they? It's all so sudden that it's knocked a good number of cottage industries and publishing ventures sideways. I don't know how it's going to pan out, but maybe the government should just step back and stop interfering every five minutes.
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2 comments:

Steve said...

The Government would do more good for this country if they sat on their privileged arses all day and did nothing at all...

StupidityContainmentFieldCompromised said...

They'd probably do more good if they were mulched and turned into compost. Mind you, they're likely to be useless in that form as well !