Teach them don't test them.

The starting point and motivation for all my thinking is simple, what do I want for my children? How I started - and I know it's not the best way - was by thinking about what I didn't like about the current system. I hoped that by identifying where I felt it has gone wrong, I could think of how to improve the system.

The first area I highlighted was testing. When I started this whole process, children were sitting their first national tests at seven. Now a reading/ decoding test has been introduced for six year olds and two year olds are also going to being assessed (a developmental check). This just seems utterly ridiculous to me and from my experience, only harms a child's education and puts pressure on families too.

Many Year Six children in English schools spend the entire year revising the information they need to get at least a Level 4 in the SATs. I completely understand the need for The Government to monitor schools, but believe that this is all these tests have become about.

Schools push the children to achieve, not for each child's benefit but for the sake of the league tables. 

This also means that the teaching the children receive is focused on training them to get the correct answer, not inspiring them or encouraging them to think. A recent study by the Welcome Trust found that since the science SAT was removed at the end of Year Six, the time spent teaching science has dropped dramatically. Although this was only a small study of people with a vested interest in science, I think it is a damning insight into our current "broad and balanced" curriculum, and the implications of our approach to testing.

Lower down the school, children's achievement has been translated into numbers/ levels and it has been decided that the children should progress along a linear path. If a child perhaps plateaus over a year, or doesn't make the expected progress, both the child and teacher are made to feel like they have done something wrong! 

There is also a focus on transparency within the current system. In principle, there's nothing wrong with this. The idea of making it clear to each child what they are trying to achieve in an activity and therefore, whether or not they have been successful can be seen as empowering. 

John Hattie has shown, in his book Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement, that visible teaching and learning occurs when the learning intentions and success criteria are clear. Where it falls down is when the transparency extends wider than the individual child, essentially publicising those who can and those who can't to all the class. 

In the Finnish education system, which consistently ranks in the top three in the world in the PISA tests as well as other international comparisons, there is only one mandated exam at the end of the senior year in high school. Alongside, this they only start school at 7. 

Pasi Sahlberg, author of the award-winning book, Finnish Lessons:What can the world learn from educational change in Finnland, says that a 'Systematic pursuit of children's wellbeing and happiness in secure environments takes precedence over measured academic achievements in Finnish schools'. What's more, even with this approach, that in itself appeals to me as a parent, they also obtain very strong academic results. 

For me the key to the Finnish education system, is that in addition to testing less and putting more trust in schools, they give their teachers - who are all qualified to Masters level - the freedom to teach the children in whichever way works best for their cohort.

I think it’s interesting that a few years ago there was a lot of press about how it was terrible how competition had been removed from schools. This was illustrated by lack of competitive sports and even sports days. 

However it seems to me that the competition wasn't removed, it was just redistrubuted back into the classroom. A place where its presence is a lot less fun and much more likely to damage children's self confidence and motivation. I would rather lose a race or a match, than feel like I was losing the learning game.

I have just read a blog by my newest hero David Price, which highlights my feelings in a much clearer way. He shows how through our obsession with targets and testing we are often killing the love of learning which I believe is surely our main job to create/instil. 

From someone who worked in schools and genuinely loved my time teaching, I have now lost any understanding of why children must all learn the same thing at the same time in the same order. The only reason I can see for this is due to the mass market nature of the education system. Today with technology becoming increasingly available, there is no excuse for this approach. The world has evolved, but we still have the same approach to education which is potentially leaving our children's futures facing extinction.

"If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow." 

John Dewey