Children aren’t
At worst the tests are a waste of time but don’t claim they will damage a five-year-old’s mental health, writes Jane Bradley
My daughter loved the P1 standardised assessments. I realise that if she reads this in the future, she may not thank me for publicly outing her as a geek, but I feel it is necessary for you to know.
Don’t get me wrong, we are by no means hot-housing her to grow up as a lover of all things examination. She went to a hippy-dippy, child-led, play-based nursery; we’re all about trying not to overschedule her and let her learn at her own pace. We’re not tiger parents in any way.
She attends a state primary which she loves and says that her favourite part of the school day is “playtime and lunchtime”. In short, she is a normal child who likes to learn well enough, but prefers chasing her friends around the school yard and riding her bike to the park.
Yet, far from finding the P1 assessments stressful in any way, as many opponents of the scheme have claimed, she described them as her “most fun day at school”.
Yet MSPS this week voted in favour of scrapping the tests after weeks of wrangling over the issue.
Education secretary John Swinney is also clearly keen to demonstrate just how fun the tests are: he recently arranged a drop in session for all MSPS to see how the assessment works. I can’t help wondering how they’ll do.
We didn’t actually realise that our daughter had even done them at the time. The whole thing passed us by in an end-of-term blur. She didn’t mention it when I did my usual “And how was your day?” question when I picked her up.
It was only when the issue was raised in the news again a few weeks ago that I remembered to ask her if the tests had actually taken place before the end of the last school year. She looked blank at first.
The idea that she had been tested