SATS and sun

Summer term is well and truly under way, which means for my year group, the tests are a comin’. Week after next to be precise. SATS have been in and out of the news recently. It seems that everyone thinks that for the young ‘uns they’re completely unnecessary and a waste of time, but the government think they’re very very important so they’re happening. The lot we have in charge now are obsessed with tests and league tables. Not just in teaching of course, but across the board. Due to being a youngster in my mid thirties I can’t remember a time where the powers that be were so intent on day to day interference in everyone’s jobs…the cynic in me feels that it justifies the existence of hordes of civil servants who need a proper job and perhaps an older, or more politically astute reader could set me straight and tell me it’s always been so. The rather useless thing about these league tables (which is what the SATS determine) is that they don’t really tell parents anything of any use. Not in my opinion anyway, but then I’m biased. The idea is so a parent who’s shopping around for a school for their child can have a look at the league table and determine which schools in their vicinity have the best education on offer. However it doesn’t really work like that. A school with very high results might just have a lot of well off parents who can afford private tuition and who have a high standard of education themselves, therefore being able to support their child by doing things we take for granted like reading with them for a few minutes every evening. I know that sounds simple but there are a few children in my class who have parents who are barely literate, who tell me in all honesty (which I respect greatly) that it’s impossible to help their child learn to read as their six year old is a better reader than they are. It happens. Also, a school might have a high proportion of newly arrived children who don’t speak much English. That school is never going to come above a half decent school which has barely any EAL children. Anyway, the point is, the league tables are misleading in the extreme and if I were a parent, knowing what I know now, I’d ignore the fucking things and just try and visit all the schools I possibly could and make a judgement on how the place looked, what the Head was like, and I’d make damn sure I spoke to some of the children. They’re the best intelligence you’ll get on the subject. This isn’t sour grapes by the way, our school isn’t too bad on the league table, but I’m also aware we’re not the best in the borough. But by no means the worst. Not even close!

As the run up to the SATS gets under way I’ve taken a decision not to talk to the parents too much about them, there’s nothing they can do at this stage to up their children’s grades and some of them will just turn their kids neurotic. The results don’t affect the children anyway, it’s just me who gets in the shit if they all get terrible grades. The first exams my lot take (in my opinion) which will matter are in nine years time when they take their GCSEs. If they still exist by then.

Another thing the recent heat and sunshine usher in are children over heating and spontaneously keeling over or going a funny colour. Children, especially small ones, over heat in a microsecond. It’s amazing. The strange thing is, I spent the coldest part of the winter telling the boys to put a jumper and coat on to go outside and now that it’s boiling hot they’re all sitting there, determined to keep their jumpers on while they go an alarming shade of purple. Children have no internal survival mechanism, or maybe just a glimmer of one. Without wanting to make crass generalisations (which should tell you I’m about to do just that), some of the Asian children are the most bizarrely dressed. You’ve really got to check the little ones at this time of year. In my school, particularly the Bangladeshi boys. They’ll be sitting there in the heat and if you don’t check you’ll find they’re wearing long-johns under their school trousers, a t-shirt, shirt and sweatshirt. And no, it’s not because they’re from a really hot country and don’t feel the heat here. They fucking well do! You’ll see small Asian boys and girls turning green and it’s only when you start checking them over that you find they’re wearing more layers than Captain Oats going outside for a shit.

The good thing about the sunshine we’re having is that my twice weekly break duties are now a pleasure. We get to go out on the grass where the kids can run free without scrapping over the lack of space on the playground. I’m a pale bastard and for the last few years I’ve actually managed to achieve the colour of a normal white person by getting two fifteen minutes in the sun a week. Any more than that and I go as red as west country halfwit.

I’ve jinxed it now, it’s going to fucking snow next week, I just know it.