Time for tough love

We need to boost the pain threshold of our children

Sats will prompt the pressures of any first exam, but they’re far from being the last

You know that pain chart they give you in hospital to try to determine your discomfort levels? Well I’m increasingly wondering how my one can be so many other peoples’ 10. Being called “love” is now “offensive” – borderline emotionally scarring – being asked to be competent at your job is “bullying”, as is every aspect of education a trauma from which our children are unlikely ever to recover.

Homework is off-the-chart distressing, as are lessons, uniforms and sitting in rows staring at the same white board rather than circular beanbag love-ins. The notion of any (enforced) physical activity beyond the relentless pummelling of thumbs on a gaming device is harrowing, alongside the mobile phone bans implemented by some of the Victorian workhouses that call themselves schools.

And let’s not even get into testing: the inhumane brutality of one person being deemed “better” at something than another. Yet even with this world of pain in mind – a world inhabited by everyone from the unions and teachers to the parents and children – this week’s bombshell headlines about primary schoolchildren “stuck in Sats revision classes during Easter holidays” hit a new level of feeble.

Those revision classes are likely to be the subject of much school gate debate today, as the new term begins. Laid on for Year 6 pupils due to sit their Sats next month, the classes were described by Chris Yeates, general secretary of teachers’ union NASUWT, as a

“growing trend” and “worrying reflection of the high-stakes accountability regime [primary schools] operate in.” Speaking at the union’s annual conference in Belfast, he insisted that “children should be spending Easter with family and friends, not cramming for Sats.”

While “high-stakes accountability regime” would be a ludicrous phrase in any context, it’s up there with the most absurd in this one. If you wanted to avoid high stakes, a career in the formation of young minds probably isn’t for you. And as for accountability – which I realise is being phased out in favour of the altogether simpler “blaming everyone but yourself ” life mantra – there is a quirky thought that suggests taking responsibility at an early age might be beneficial.

Once you start reading up on the gruelling Easter revision courses these child labourers have attended over the past fortnight, your heart does bleed. While some schools combined maths, reading, spelling and grammar revision with – look away now if you’re squeamish – “activities such as making Easter bonnets”, others rewarded pupils’ attendance “with treats such as Mcdonald’s Happy Meals”.

Because oh – didn’t I mention that

these classes were optional? Which makes them about as traumatising as a missed episode of Scooby-doo: still an 11 on that pain chart, don’t get me wrong, but something one might, in time, get over.

Of course, if Jeremy Corbyn gets his way children won’t have to sit exams at all. Just last week the Labour leader announced the party’s intention to scrap Sats, claiming the “regime of extreme pressure testing” was giving children “nightmares” and leaving teachers “overworked and overstressed”. No doubt, they also risk elevating 11-year-olds to towering levels of intellect compared with Corbyn’s own.

I suspect he would do away with vast swathes of the curriculum if he could (history’s not much use when you know what’s right and wrong, and our kids mustn’t be given a poor impression of comrade Stalin). Wouldn’t it be preferable for our children to spend their days doodling peace signs than waste time swotting up on a test that only exists to help the Government judge how well a school is doing – before the results are compiled into league tables?

Which brings me to the problem: as a country that consistently ranks low in literacy and numeracy on international league tables, I’m not convinced taking a gentler approach is the way forward. And given testing and revision are about discipline, something we’re not exactly culturally renowned for, citing the “national obsession with testing” as being at the root of our education woes does seem to be a mischaracterisation of the most disingenuous kind.

Yes, Sats will prompt the pressures of any first exam, but they’re far from being the last our children will have to sit. Beyond GCSES and A-levels there will be sporting trials, driving tests, job interviews and applications of endless kinds. God knows marriage is the ultimate test.

So rather than do away with a discipline our children will need in their lives, it might be more helpful to boost their pain thresholds that are already, I’m betting, much higher than we think.