SATs

My daughter has done nothing for the past term other than be trained to pass her SATs. As she could already do this standing on her head she’s bored out of her mind. With the amount of attention that the school pays to them and the amount of cramming that is going on to help the less able students the results are meaningless. The first thing her secondary school will do is retest using a different method so that they can place her in the correct classes for her ability. The whole emphasis is meaningless and makes the tests pointless.

One of my friends said that their child went through exactly the same experience.

All that is being measured is how good the school are at cramming children with dead facts. It’s rubbish!

Medics

I am getting very worried about becoming ill in the next few years after talking to a friend of mine who is a newish hospital consultant. When he was helping examine some candidates recently (for the first time) he decided to be guided by the person who was the experienced examiner along with him.

He thought the first candidate was terrible and in his day wouldn’t have got through. The other examiner thought the candidate “quite good”! This individual was the best of the bunch! Basically they now have an “educationalist” approach: an answer has to be near enough (as in sub continental distances) and is then spun into being correct. This is wonderful when the individual is calculating how much painkiller to give your child, isn’t it? Please realise, it isn’t their fault, either – it’s the government minister(s) that encouraged this change in practice who will be long gone when this comes home to roost. The current system seems to be letting everybody down and the individuals responsible won’t be around when there is a reckoning. Good eh?

Just to add some icing on the cake: one of the examiners in another room would not pass one of the candidates because he or she was just awful and on their second attempt. What did they do? Got another examiner, later, to pass them.

Are you scared yet?

When I get old these are the people who will be looking after me. Like I said, their lack of training and proper testing isn’t their fault, but it will be me and my generation who pays the price. Hopefully the mess will be sorted when my kids start falling to pieces.