Let’s learn from America
The former MP Douglas Carswell – now CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy in the US – has highlighted a crucial difference between the American and British education systems.
He says: “As a parent, there is one striking difference that no one seems to talk about. It is so much easier in the United States to know how your child is doing at school than it is in England.”
He explains that in the US, every pupil carries a Grade Point Average (GPA) from middle school onwards. All tests and assignments are included, and when they reach 17, they sit a SAT or aptitude test.
He adds in his Telegraph column: “This means that you have a far better sense of how your child is progressing throughout their education. Not just some vague report card that says something about ‘meeting expectations’ or very occasional exam grades.”
The great irony is that the UK SATs system was originally based on the US SAT system. They have continued with it, and we abandoned it.
Our SATs used to give us an accurate picture of children’s progress throughout the educational system – and it was nationwide.
It applied not only to primary education but secondary education too for the core subjects of English, Maths and Science.
First, the government dropped the science element for primary children (Key Stage 2), and then it dismantled Key Stage 3 tests that took place at the end of Year 9 in English, Maths and Science.
Furthermore, in Key Stage 2, there used to be Levels 1-6 with a, b, and c grades for each.
This enabled teachers to peg their children very accurately – level 4b in maths and level 5a in English, for example. This applied to science, too, until it was abolished.
It meant in primary education there were 18 staging points for English and 18 staging points for maths – there was a very clear picture of children’s progress.
This has now been reduced to three staging points in English and three in Maths – children are ‘working towards’ (up to 35/40 per cent), ‘working at’ (roughly 40-80 per cent) or ‘working above’ (80 per cent-plus) National Level.
This is virtually meaningless, and no one really knows what it signifies, as it is so generalised and lacking in detail.
Even before the National Curriculum came along, teachers generally graded work A to E with pluses and minuses in between.
The situation now means that five groups of people are clueless as to what is actually happening – parents, primary schools, secondary schools (when children transfer), the government and the children themselves.
What a mess!
The progressives hate testing and have objected to SATs right from the start.
However, it originally gave us a great deal of information about children’s progress.
What do we do now?
Until a government puts right what has gone wrong, parents and students can use Douglas Carswell’s website that he has created – grademygrade.com
As he explains: “First, it tells you where a single result sits against the national distribution. Enter a SATs scaled score in reading, maths or grammar; a GCSE grade in any of 26 subjects; or an A-level grade in any of 34 subjects. The site tells you immediately: top 5 per cent, top quarter, top half, bottom third. Real percentile placement against the most recently published cohort.
“Second, it lets you compare any school in England. Search for any state primary or secondary school by name, town, or postcode. You will see that school’s average scaled scores at SATs, its Attainment 8 at GCSE (a measure used in England to show how well pupils perform across eight GCSE-level qualifications at the end of secondary school), its progress against similar schools and where it ranks among peers of the same type.
“Third, and this is the part nobody else does, once you have entered a grade and selected a school, the site tells you how that grade compares to the typical pupil at that specific school. Not just where your child sits nationally. Where your child sits within their own school.”
ends