I refer to today's article in the Telegraph by Bernice McCabe, Headmistress of North London Collegiate School (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2016/05/27/schools-must-aim-higher-than-teaching-to-the-test/).
Mrs McCabe is writing as the Headmistress of one of the most successful independent girls schools in the country so I think we can assume that she knows what she is talking about.
It worries me that our education system is so focused on testing. We have heard so much recently about the pressures the SATs put on children as young as Year 2 and those that teach them. I have seen evidence of schools being forced to limit their timetables to English and maths and the occasional PE lesson. This is not education. This is not broadening children's minds. It is simply jumping through hoops to satisfy targets and produce data that those who make decisions on our education system seem to love so much.
Don't get me wrong, testing is a valuable part of a successful education but it should be a marker post on the way to gauge pupils' understanding. Our boys are about to do their Common Entrance exams. They have been working hard towards them and they are hoping to do well. I am a big fan of Common Entrance, I think it is an excellent way to mark the end of their prep school education and it gives the pupils something to aim for.
There are those who criticise Common Entrance for being too narrow but surely this is down to those that are teaching the syllabus. Yes, if we were to stick only to what is likely to be in the papers, it would be very narrow, and very boring. Schools have a duty to ensure that the teachers do not do this. The aim is to instil a love of learning; an enthusiasm for the subjects that they study. Unfortunately this is unmeasurable, we cannot create data for the level of engagement. Occasionally we get letters or emails from former pupils who say what they are taking for A-Levels or reading at university and they sometimes say, "It all started with Mr / Mrs so-and-so at Sunningdale." For a teacher this is manna from heaven.
We can all remember, as pupils, some of the lessons we most enjoyed were when the teacher went off on a complete tangent about something they were passionate about. When I was at school we used to play a game where we tried to see if we could get the teacher to go off on a 'red-herring'. Of course the teachers knew what they were doing and we were learning all the time and we loved it.
It goes beyond the classroom too. I have always felt that league tables present such a narrow view of what constitutes a good school. Good schools get good results, yes, but they do this, as Mrs McCabe says, by building those important qualities that stay with the pupils for life. Confidence, resilience, self-discipline, courage, joie de vivre; these are the things that count.
We must strive to get good results, we owe that to our pupils, but we need to remember that a child is so much more than the sum of his or her grades.
