PAT welcomes latest Primary Review interim reports

8 February 2008

The Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) has welcomed the findings of the Primary Review on testing and the start of formal education.

Commenting on testing, PAT General Secretary Philip Parkin said: “Schools should be about educating children, not teaching them to pass tests in an inflexible, mechanical process.  Tests have a place in education but our pupils are currently over-tested.  Young people between five and 18 are likely to take over 100 public examinations.  That is too many.   

“We need to move education away from rigid teaching to tests in order to allow more accurate measures of individual pupils’ performance and development.

"As personalised learning becomes the focus of attention, it is time for the Government to have the courage to bring this testing regime to an end.”

Commenting on the school starting age, Philip Parkin said: “Young children are individuals and vary greatly in their academic development and readiness for formal learning. They learn through play and interaction. Countries such as some of the Nordic and central European nations, that do not start formal education until children are six or seven have broader curriculums that are better suited to children’s natural learning strategies and provide a better foundation for life and lifelong learning. 

“A highly prescriptive, inflexible academic curriculum at such an early age is too much, too young."