Reprinted from Let Our Kids Be Kids website
LINK
Open Letter from Let Our Kids Be Kids – the voice of tens of thousands of parents who want an end to SAT testing NOW.
Dear Nicky Morgan,
We are aware that you’ve been flooded with open letters recently but
this one is a bit different. We’re writing from everybody. We represent
the voice of parents across the country. Parents are everybody. They are
teachers, they are junior doctors, they are steel workers, they are
speech therapists, neuro scientists, academics, small business owners,
stay at home mums. Parents aren’t people you can dismiss into a single
box; parents are everybody that you were voted in to serve.
- Children as young as 6 are labelling themselves failures and crying about going to school. We know this because we are parents.
- The capacity for children of this age to actually learn the concepts
you have asked them to learn is questionable. We know this because
parents are also neuro scientists.
- Children’s mental health is at risk because of the increased
pressure they face through primary school testing. We know this because
parents are also mental health nurses.
- By the time these children reach secondary school they are turned
off education. We know this because parents are also secondary teachers
- Children who have been taught in a system obsessed with passing
tests rather than learning for learning’s sake enter the world of work
unprepared. We know this because parents are also business owners.
- By the time children who have been through this exam factory end up
at university they have to be re taught how to learn in a curious way.
We know this because parents are also academics.
The other interesting thing about parents is that they aren’t
employed or paid by you. You can’t dismiss our concerns as being about
pay or holidays or pension plans… our priority is the happiness and
wellbeing of our children.
You’ve said some interesting things about parents but rest assured
that we are parents who would most definitely discuss the issue of
education with you if you were to turn up on our doorsteps. We are
parents who do feel that elections can be won or lost on educational
matters. There are tens of thousands of us and we have reached the point
when it is time for us to speak. We need you to listen.
We’re not convinced, based on your track record, that you’ll listen
to just words so, to make it very clear how strongly we feel, we are
also planning a day of action with a
Kids’ Strike on 3rd May
(#KidsStrike3rdMay) which will see thousands of primary school children
staying off school IN SUPPORT of teachers and schools and in protest at
the DfE’s testing policies. We want an end to SATs NOW. Not in 2017,
not in the future. NOW.
Perhaps the government hoped that this mass parental revolt would be
extinguished following the shambolic cancellation of KS1 SPaG test? This
has simply added fuel to the fire. It merely demonstrates how little
thought goes into your decisions and shows that you do think teacher
assessment is a good enough tool to use.
You have dismissed the concerns of pupil stress and anxiety caused by
the SATs by blaming our wonderful teachers for not administering tests
in an appropriate manner. We say to you that this is utter nonsense.
Teachers would be insane to allow our children to face these tests
unprepared. The new curriculum related to these tests demands that
teachers teach a dulled down, test driven curriculum to our children for
months in advance. Since you and your inspectors put so much emphasis
on test scores for your league tables can you blame schools for trying
to get the best out of our children? We don’t blame them. We blame you
and your government’s ridiculous testing regime.
A marvellous quote was posted to our campaign page:
“Learning can only happen when a child is interested. If
he is not interested, it is like throwing marshmallows at his head and
calling it eating.”
Your government has effectively spent millions of pounds of tax
payers’ money chucking marshmallows at our children’s heads. You’ve had
some wonderful teachers trying their hardest to chuck these marshmallows
about but no matter how hard they try they are still missing… because
these children are in the vast majority of cases simply not mentally
ready to learn the material you have placed in front of them. It’s a bit
like teaching an 8 year old to drive a sports car or a 6 month old to
walk… it’s not going to happen.
You have got it wrong. We give you a score of zero for this. You have
failed. Please resit your submission for devising an appropriate
testing system. Or you could just leave it to the experts in the field,
the trained teachers, next time.
Conspiracies abound that this is all part of the enforced academies
plan. Making SATs so hard that schools inevitably fail means that your
academy business leaders can come in and rescue ‘failing’ schools…
leaving them completely unaccountable to parents. You will never have to
listen to us again! It’s good to have a plan… just not a plan which
leaves millions of children as assets and the education of our children
as a commodity… that would in fact be a truly awful plan.
Please take a long, hard look at this. Do you want your legacy to be
the confident cancellation of unneeded and unnecessary SATS, showing you
are listening to your electorate and the teachers you claim to support…
or the overseeing of a shambolic testing regime desperately unwanted by
millions of people to the point that this country saw it’s first open
parent revolt?
You have the power to stop these tests. NOW. Our children, our teachers and our schools deserve better than this.
With sincere hope that you are listening, on behalf of the tens of thousands of supporters of ‘Let Our Kids Be Kids’.
