But I Smile Anyway…

Dear Nicky Morgan MP,

Thank you.

A heartfelt thank you from a parent of a current Year 6 class in the UK.

Why am I thanking you?

Well, for the timely manner in which your Education Committee have provided the new Standards that teachers need to use to grade their pupils.

Not only do they now have just barely 3 months to act on these standards before the SATS, but they now also have to let the majority of a whole year group know that apparently, they are not actually good enough.

Thank you.

Many thanks for being the reason my child will be setting himself up to fail.

Thank you.

Let me show my gratitude in advance, for the flood of Year 6 teaching vacancies that will be about to appear, as many talented professionals feel they have failed, because they couldn’t get the vast majority of children to reach these new standards.

Oh let’s just cut to the chase, shall we?

The new National Curriculum, rolled out last academic year, was a tough one. Most children were working, apparently, at least a year behind where the new Curriculum felt they should be.

Even so, I saw, with the support of the wonderful staff at my son’s school, that for the first time in his academic life, my son was ‘meeting’ the National Standards.  You don’t know the confidence boost that gave to him.  I could see him visibly grow taller, so to speak, as he felt that he was actually alright in his studies.

And for the first half of this year, he has been working on this premise, and all the work he has done, has been pointing him in the ‘meeting’ direction. (Maths may be a wobbly one, but hey, I was never great at maths either!)

Then your announcement.

Wonderful.

What a great start to the holidays for a child, eh. The teachers regretfully had to let him know, along with many other children, that according to someone sat up in a bubble, their work was apparently not good enough.

I am sorry, but have you seen some of the new things they have to learn?  I have sat with Google to hand to work out what some of the grammar actually means.  This is not the work of a primary school aged child, but more that of your 13 year old secondary school pupil!

And the new SATS.

So you are testing with the new Curriculum in mind.  But this year of children have only been studying the new Curriculum for 2 years… effectively, they may have missed 2 years of subject matter that you are meant to be testing them on.  Where is the fairness in that?

(Let’s not mention the fact that you are seemingly not willing to sit the test yourself…)

Surely you could have held the new SATS for the year group that had actually studied the whole curriculum, as it stands, like the current Year 3 children?

All this barely weeks before they are about to find out where they are going to Secondary School too…

So many teachers have been trying their hardest to get their pupils to reach these unrealistic goals that you have set, and when it all comes back to bite you in the butt, a lot of them will have given up trying.  And you know what is even worse?  Those same teachers are the ones who have to face the flack of the parents, whose seemingly genius child is now apparently just average, or those happily average children, who now are deemed lacking in their intelligence.  It’s not their teaching that is at fault, it is you, changing goal posts at such a late stage in the academic year, and placing them so far away.

So again, I say thank you.

My child may just end up feeling like he’s stupid. He may lose the confidence that he had finally built up. He might feel that trying his best is just not good enough, so may end up not even trying.

I have worked hard with my children, to instil the importance of education into them.  I just hope that all our hard work at home, and all the hours and hard work of his teachers has not been in vain.

Kind Regards,

A concerned mum

P.S. Did I mention that I am an Early Years teacher…? Don’t get me started on Baseline, and what you think 3-5 year old’s should be able to do!

Images courtesy of Google.