It’s the punchline (or whatever you’d call it) to Saturday’s “Secret Teacher” blog in the Guardian:
Not living in the UK any more, I totally fail to get the point of this, but I’m sure some kind Briton can easily tell me … what’s a SAT in the UK context? And is 5 good, or bad, or what?
5 is the best score on the AP test so I don’t know if it’s a mistake or a joke or some British reference I don’t get
National Curriculum assessments. You take the at the age of 7, 11 and (at one time, but no longer) 14. They’re supposed to be primarily used to measure the attainment of the school in advancing the learning of its pupils, but inevitably the results are employed to make assessment of, and judgments about, the individual pupils.
Ok. So in the context of an 11-year-old 5 is quite good
(I don’t quite get the ending of that article then … some point about over-concentration on standardised testing rather than actual learning? nm.)
Thanks!
Yes. The way you maximise your pupils’ test scores is by imparting to them the skills and techniques required to pass tests and, in the substantive content of your lessons, by “teaching to the test”. Neither of these things have any surpassing educational value, and they distract somewhat from the important tasks like helping your pupils discover what they are passionate about, helping them to flourish and develop and become the people that they can be.
The writer’s disappointment, I think, is not that his or her pupils scored highly in the SATs, but that they thought that scoring highly in the SATs was the most signficant aspect of their education.
Nailed it (in this and the previous post). Yes, 5 is the highest level an 11-year-old would typically be able to achieve (because the standard papers for that age only go up to 5 - you could theoretically score higher than a 5 at age 11 but only if you took an extra paper at a higher level).
FTR - I got straight 5s in my SATs at age 11. The average for that age is a 4.