Is this parenting today?

Political rhetoric and high stakes testing are sucking parents into the same data-driven mindset that dominates schools under pressure to perform, says Mick Waters...

Pity parents. What sense must they make of education today? They are told their efforts are vital to the success of their children and, knowing this to be true, most want to help. However, the school system is sucking parents into a world of data, targets and outcomes to such an extent they feel the measurement of their school is now a reflection on their children and on their family. Who would want to be a Level 3 parent?

The endless gibberish spoken by politicians and fanned by the media with half-truths and broad generalisation leads many parents to believe the worst of schools. We know the majority of parents are content with the school their child attends but believe the school system generally to be inadequate. Parents struggle to make sense of the vocabulary of schooling so easily used by a leadership under pressure to deliver: they hear talk of ‘adding value’, ‘progress over time’, ‘indicators’, and ‘outcomes’. Parents see school signs, websites and notepaper adorned with eulogies from Ofsted proclaiming their school to be ‘good with outstanding features’ or ‘in the 100 most improved schools nationally’ or having ‘achieved the best results ever’. Of course schools need to recognise success, but this marketing is driven by the need to please the scrutinisers and to attract yet more parents who will get behind the quest to secure yet better ‘results’.

The good parent has to do her part to the extent she might be doing the lion’s share. Where a simple contract to abide by the school rules used to suffice, she now feels the need to make sure her child succeeds. Where once the parent was urged to read a lot to her children, she now feels compelled to source a private tutor. The tension felt in many homes as SATs approach, or the new annual nonsense test in phonics looms, is not only about the child doing well but securing the best possible results for
the school.

The Amazon website shows the popularity of books by age group in terms of sales. For the 8- 11 age range the top selling book on May 15th was The Gruffalo. The next three top selling books are all practice papers for SATs. That sub set of parents who access Amazon have provided for their children a tedious trudge through activities that will, in many cases, put their children off enjoying mathematics, writing and literature. Is this parenting today?

Why have parents bought these slug books instead of Billionaire Boy or The Butterfly Lion or one of the well-known traditional children’s classics? Well, sometimes the school has suggested them. Parents think these tests are all important, and they are right – the early years at secondary school shape a child’s educational outcome because they dictate the teaching set in which he will be placed.

Of course, most parents do not realise marking comparability is so bad that a child has a 16 per cent chance of being placed in the wrong level for their efforts in mathematics…and this inconsistency is much greater in writing. Children only get one shot at SATs and so they matter as much as any other tests taken at any stage in the school system; they are very high stakes. Indeed, a concerned parent might do better to ensure her child is absent on the day, rather than taking the test and risking being placed in a lower group than his level in class suggests. Mass absence would be a problem for the schools though, hence the pressure put on parents to send in their children, whatever the circumstances.

And there’s the rub: the school’s results matter as much as the individual child’s. The need to show ‘added value’, ‘progress by sub level’, and ‘the impact of interventions’ can reduce the Year 6 experience to personable tedium.

Pleasant and compromised teachers nudge children through the practice of endless past papers – to go alongside the evenings of tedium where children complete their purchased books or work with their private tutors.

A six-week learning binge after SATs can’t make up for the starvation of learning stimulus in the many months before. This means there is little time to show how mathematical principles apply to the real world, less time for practical work using apparatus in authentic contexts, and barely a moment to get immersed in a novel or to write the extended story that unfolds over time. There might, however, be more time for children to think that learning is not for them and to begin that gradual disengagement that risks growing in adolescence.

So get out the equipment, the microscopes, mirrors, rolling pins, brushes and compasses. Get children working on the allotments, projects in their neighbourhood, and improvements to their school. Take them to galleries, museums, factories, farms, forests, market places, shorelines, mountains and churches. Let them dance and sing and move. Let them realise the miracle of what it is to be a human being and help their parents to realise it too. Joyous, learning children: lucky parents.