The parents who pulled their kids from school over SATs are utterly misguided
by Harriet Maltby / May 4, 2016 / Leave a comment
Parents protest SATs exams with their children in Preston Park, Brighton ©Gareth Fuller/PA Wire/Press Association Images
Read more: Schools should offer two maths GCSEs—one academic, one practical
Yesterday, thousands of parents across the country pulled their seven year olds out of school in protest at the “stress” experienced in the run up to SATs: Standard Assessment Tests that all pupils in Year Two (and Year Six) sit. The parents—who took part in the protest as part of the “Let Our Kids be Kids” campaign—are adamant that it is the SATs themselves that are to blame.
Yet the pressure that exams themselves place on students tends to relate to the direct consequences of failure. Fail your GCSEs or A-levels and you won’t get into university. Fail your university finals paper and you won’t get a good job. SATs have no such direct consequences.
Exam stress at A-level or university is an understandable product of believing that your future hinges on the result of the paper you are about to sit. Failure has immediate and understandable consequences for your ambitions and future earnings.
Aged seven, however, your life perspective is wholly different. I live with a seven year old. His life agenda is ice cream after dinner, an extra ten minutes of the video game Minecraft, and exploring ever more creative ways to push back bedtime. His life ambition is to go to America on holiday. At this age, “exam stress” is entirely the creation of parents—or worse, schools themselves.
Parents understandably want their children to do well, but there is a fine line between putting pressure on your children to work hard, and putting pressure on them to achieve a grade beyond their capability. The motto was simple in our house. “As long as you can look me in the eye,” my mother would say, “and tell me you did your best, I will be proud.” If there is stress then it is the fault of parents in general—not the exams themselves. Helping your child to do their best, not be the best, is the crucial distinction in reducing the stress of exams.
The irony is that this is precisely what SATs are designed to help parents and schools do. That SATs are viewed as “exams” like GCSEs…
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