The greater testing burden

In addition to the learning and teaching difficulties and the extra pressures on pupils, teachers and parents which the inconsistencies of English spelling create, they also entail much more testing. In languages which children can learn to read in about 3 to 6 months, nobody thinks of regularly testing their reading skills, any more than we would consider repeatedly testing toddlers’ ability to walk.

English-speaking pupils keep having their reading ability tested, because learning to read English takes years rather than just weeks or months. The longer learning time gives them far more scope to fall seriously behind their classmates, and literacy problems get harder to remedy, the longer they are left unattended (as I explained on 4 February). Regular testing of reading has therefore become well-established in all English-speaking primary and grade schools.

Until a couple of decades ago, the results of reading assessment were used mainly for identifying children who needed extra help or those who should be set more challenging work. In the UK and US, simultaneously administered tests for certain year groups, such as 7, 11 and 14, have also been used for monitoring standards at national and international level.

Because national tests kept identifying worryingly high levels of functional illiteracy (and innumeracy), governments increasingly also began to use testing as a means of driving up standards. In the UK test results are now published as school league tables. Schools in which a high percentage of pupils do not achieve government literacy and numeracy targets are labelled as ‘failing’, put into special measures and threatened with closure, with the aim of making teachers squeeze more effort out of their pupils.

Unfortunately, the publication and ranking of test results also helps to determine what kind of pupils a school can attract. Given a choice, parents naturally prefer to send their children to a school that is rated good or excellent rather than poor. This right is, however, exercised mainly by shrewder, wealthier and better-informed parents who generally also put more effort into supporting their children’s education and whose offspring tend to do relatively well in tests and examinations.

The high-ranking schools therefore gradually attract more and more well-performing children. Those with poorer scores are increasingly left with poorer pupils. They find it progressively harder to improve their test results. They also have more trouble attracting enough good teachers, because working in them can be extremely challenging.

Teacher comments on US educational websites, such as http://www.reading.org, suggest that things are now moving in the same more test-heavy direction there too. American politicians are as desperate to raise educational attainment as British ones, because a better educated workforce is believed to be crucial to the economic future of both countries.

In Britain, the use of testing for driving up overall national educational performance has been ineffective, despite government ministers often claiming that it has. They cite the spectacular changes in the Sats (Standard Assessment Tests) scores of UK 11-year-olds between 1997 and 2009 as evidence for their claim: in 1997 just 63% had attained level 4 in English; by 2009 this had risen to 80%. Isn’t this clear proof of the efficacy of Labour education policies over that period?

A closer study of the UK Sats results reveals that much of the 17% ‘improvement’ in the English SATs scores between 1998 and 2009 was achieved simply by the introduction of new tests in 1999. It produced a 7% gain from 1998 and 1999 (64% to 71%), and a further 4% the following year (71% to 75%). This spectacular 11% increase over two years was, however, followed by complete stagnation for the next three years, and only minimal improvement since (75% in 2003 to 80% in 2009), which may well be due entirely teachers simply getting better at preparing their students for the tests. There have been regular reports of cheating too. When the reputation of teachers depends on their students’ test scores, they are inevitably inclined to lend a helping hand.

Most English secondary schools have continued to use their own tests for assessing new entrants and have not registered any dramatic improvements in their literacy standards between 1997 and 2009. Independent monitors, such as the CEM at the University of Durham, have also failed to do so.