I met with Miss Key today, Elena's Reception teacher. We sat in tiny chairs at a tiny table. She's doing great, but I asked about the note in her file that said Elena has a target for developing her memory. There's nothing wrong with Elena's memory. She can memorise a (simple) story the first time it's read to her, which makes it interesting helping her practice her reading. She also remembers everybody's names, even the names of people she doesn't know, like her friends' dads' names.
She said the memory comment was nothing to worry about. Apparently they run a test against all the children in their third week of school - without the parents' knowledge - called the Bury test. They show them six black and white pictures and then turn them over and ask the children to recall what they were.
There is so much wrong with this. I'm not an educator, but I can make a good start on why half the children 'failed' the test: for a start they're not engaging with the images at all, not discussing them, not relating to them, not forming them as part of their experience. There's no story, there's no way to make them relevant. It doesn't pick up on the fact that we have individual learning styles. And it doesn't reflect the learning experience they enjoy in the classroom. 'Even an adult would be mentally reciting what the images are, trying to remember them by rote' Miss Key said. And it is actually a verbal and confidence test, asking children some of whom have just turned four to articulate what was represented with adults they hardly know.
I don't want to complain just on the basis of my child failing a test. I am not that vain. But what does worry me is that they are unfairly measuring the children, making judgements about them, and worst of all, they're doing it becuase they get their funding based on the number of children who fail it. So when Miss Key and the other teachers have pushed back, they've been told that they have to do it. They're building a failure experience into the child's day, into their record, so they can get funds.
Which points to a bigger, deeper problem, that the school system is built around addressing failure, instead of celebrating success. I know this isn't an isolated incident. A friend's child across the county was being mercilessley bullied by a child - a traveller with learning difficulties. When she complained, she was politely invited to remove her daughter from the school, because they got more money for educating the more difficult child.
Creating an opportunity to fail, and rewarding on that basis, will affect the culture these teachers work in and the environments the children learn in. Miss Key said, 'We've objected, but they say we just have to do it.' Case in point. They can't on the one hand congratulate Elena for asking lots of questions and then with the other hand stick their fingers in their ears. A behaviour, an attitude, a manner of operating like this will seep through into everything they do.
My attitude to her schooling has been that I cannot home educate her, but I will support and supplement at home. I'd thought this would mean reading extra books, going on extra field trips, looking up videos of parrots on youtube. Apparently it means helping her to understand that she should focus on strengths, celebrate successes, and seek positive change. And challenge anything and anyone that tries to get her to lose belief in herself and what is right.
