Blood, fret and fears... but testing helps pupils

EVeN by the standards of the brutal Seventies, my primary school was uncompromising. there was the belt, there were times tables by rote, there were ‘i before e except after c’ chants. And there were tests.

i still recall the ‘ting, ting’ noise of blood dripping from my lips as it landed in an aluminium carry-out tray from the kitchens after i tripped and fell on playground kerb stones. i still have the scars, visible on cold days.

that my battered lips resembled Donald Duck’s beak mattered not. it was Reading test day and i took my turn by the teacher’s desk.

i told of Janet and John while balancing my book and blood-spattered tray, trying not to lisp too much through the bruising and swelling.

All around Scotland, trendy notions swirled but never touched my state school. Kids at other schools learned to make the figure 7 with a Germanic dash through its shaft as they were going to be good little europeans.

We rejected this and even ‘French centimetres’ were regarded with suspicion.

While other pupils were told not to worry about spelling as long as they could express themselves, we began every piece of work by drawing a fat margin down the left of the page so red ink corrections could be emphatically added by the teacher.

tap your inner feelings and creativity once you know ‘it’s’ from ‘its’ and ‘lax’ from ‘lacks’ was the message.

And there were tests. Weekly tests, monthly tests, annual tests. they mattered because the results meant ‘setting’ into groups of similar ability.

that made teaching easier – stragglers could get more time lavished on them; high-fliers weren’t held back. Fast forward to the modern era and testing is back, if not popular. Of course, no one dare call them tests – they are Scottish National Standardised Assessments, applied in P1, P4 and P7.

the idea is to gather empirical evidence of how children are doing, vital for parents, teachers and a Scottish Government which has thus far presided over a disastrous slide in numeracy and literacy.

But there’s a backlash, with parents being urged to boycott the system, especially the P1 element which has, we are told, reduced children to blubbering wrecks.

Really? i’m sure a few nervous wee souls are like that, but isn’t the reality that some teaching unions are shroudwaving to protect underperforming members?

As a parent, i want to know how my children are doing and not for schoolgate bragging rights.

We all want our children to have the maximum opportunity to excel, to not only chase their dreams but to live them, too.

THAt means getting the foundations right, starting in P1. if there’s a problem, better to find out sooner so something can be done. education Minister John Swinney is forever mired in sinister schemes to gather families’ personal data, such as the illegal Named Persons plan. it’s dead but lumbers on like a zombie.

if the SNP wants a Minister for Social engineering, good luck sneaking it past the voters.

Meanwhile, Mr Swinney should be sticking to his education remit and to his guns on testing.

that’s because his party’s education policy is forever in Remedial, with a red ‘See me after class!’ in the margin of its homework book.