This is going to get interesting

In the UK we have our children sit something calls SATs. The main ones are in yr 6 so when you child is 10 or 11 years old.

But and this is the big but they actually do start testing them to a baseline from Reception, age 4 or 5. Then again in Yr 1 age 5/6 and again in Yr 2 6/7

These ones, the education system and the schools want us to believe its nothing but testing to make sure your child is where they should be, they won’t even know they are being tested and it will be a very simple thing.

I have been umming and arring over these tests. My issue with them is its very much a one size fits all sort of a system. They expect your child to fit into this box and things like imagination, skills outside of a book are ignored.

If you are don’t learn from books but learn from doing, then these tests are going to be hell, I don’t agree with testing children from such an early age and added to this these tests are then used as a baseline going all the way up to GCSE’s (age 15/16) so what you have been tested when you were 5 is going to effect you all the way through senior school.

The final straw for me, is when monkey bought home a little note asking me to work on certain sounds for this exact exam. If they are not meant to know they are being tested then, why is he getting extra homework?

So I wrote the school, a lovely letter, aided by one of my friends, that I am withdrawing monkey from these SATs. This was 2 weeks ago, when I was talking to the family support lady, she said the school were very surprised that this letter had come out of the blue, which to be fair is probably true, as I drop monkey and pick him up with very little communication, but they have not communicated with me in anyway.

I have parents evening on Tuesday, where I will raise it with his teacher, and then go from there. While the school don’t really know me that well, they probably are about to. I have no wish to start world war 3 with them, but I am not happy SATs are the best way to go with any child,

I have heard that Yr 6 children who sit these exams get stressed, depressed and in some occassions suicidal, I am talking about 10 year old children. This is so very wrong and should show the government that these tests are not right.

I don’t disagree with exams on the whole, I think they are important but not at age 4, 5, 6 or even 10. I wish more parents would take a stand and say no. We are the only country in Europe who do this type of testing and its not right, how do I know this? Because OECD pisa ratings confirmed the UK ranks first among all developed countries for “low value” state education. We are one of the worse countries in the developed world for education.

Every child is different and should be taken on those merits, not on their ability to memorise loads of things. I will also say, I am not scared monkey would fail any memory test. We have a lot of problems making sure he is reading the words in a book rather than just remembering what it is.