Formal assessments and testing of 4 year olds? Really?!

Recently I looked at the UK's government plans to extend school hours to nine hours a day, from 9am to 6pm every day for five days a week. I looked into the effects this would have on the children, parents, practitioners and general culture and household lifestyle. However it seems tha recently the Michael Gove, the UK's Secetary of State for Education is once again putting his nose into our Education system and messing it up again with yet more plans.

This time he wants to have children assessed and tested at the age of four and five. After reading an article published by the BBC yesterday I have once again decided to look at this in detail and pull it apart. (Link to article).

So first of all, Gove thinks it is a good idea to have children sit through mini-exams and tests so that teachers can establish "the level of cognitive development that they're at". So, you're telling me Gove that teachers are going to take time out of their planning and lessons that are crucuial at early years to sit a thirty four year old children down on individual tables, give them a pencil and an exam paper and expect them to do it? They're four years old, not fourteen! For crying out loud, its like you didn't even think this through. Most four year old children are just coming up from Nursery and are used to playing around and some don't even know how to spell their own name correctly and you want to test them with an exam before they even start school?

Please someone tell me its just not me that thinks that is a stupid idea that will never work. He claims that we should test children to see what their cognitive development is at. But he does realise that throughout nursery and pre-school the Early Years Foundation Stafe (EYFS) which is the Early Years Curriculum framework already establishes and sets that? The EYFS has areas that through observations of play and activities helps practitioners already determine what age and stage a child's cognitive development is at. Then those same observations, assessments and files that are painstakingly written at the end of a child's time at nursery are passed along to the child's school.

As a early years teacher, you are passed a file with information on what the child has achieved, what he or she can do and how well they can perform tasks. So then you carry that on in your class as the EYFS is still in affect for children upto the age of five and continues into Year 1 of primary school. You already have the data that you need to ensure the children in your class have the best possible development and get what they need each day. But Gove wants the children to sit down and be tested as well, which is going to waste time, money and effort gathering data and statistics that we already have available!

Not to mention at such a young age children are not going to sit still and concentrate to see if they can spell "Dinosaur" or "Mississippi". They're not that bothered about working out what six times three is and why the sky is blue. Its not a true test of their cognitive ability. Most children at the age of four and five are just learning basic phonics and basic mathematics. I'm talking counting to twenty and then Gove expects them to be able to sit through a test?

I think that as a country we are pushing children too bloody hard! We start their education from the moment they are born. They are expected to know certain things and hit certain targets by certain ages or else they are labelled as "behind" or "failing". We over-diagnose them with ADHD and other disorders when they are just trying to be themselves and now we're planning to keep them in school for 45 hours a week and sit them through a series of tasks and exams when they're only four years old? Most other countries such as Finland, Germany and even Japan doesn't have their children start school until they are seven years old and they have some of the best education systems in the world!

Gove stated in an interview "What we need to do is to ensure that schools that are helping the most disadvantaged children in the most difficult areas are rewarded most generously for the work they do in order to advance social justice.". I understand that he wants to help children that live in 'difficult areas' however testing them at the age of four is not the way. Keeping them in school for nine hours a day and tiring them out and turning them into mindless drones is just not the way to do this.

So to back up my claims against Gove, I'm going to bore you all to death and throw some childcare legislation down his throat... The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) states: "Article 29 (Goals of education):Children’s education should develop each child’s personality, talents and abilities to the fullest.". So someone please explain to me how testing children at the age of four is developing the children's personality, talents and abilities to the fullest? Because we all know that if a child is tested and they fail the test they will be labelled as having "Less cognitive development" over the "Standards" and this could seriously damage the child's self-esteem and then this doesn't allow children to have the motivation and esteem to gain what the UNCRC states they should gain from an educational system. 

So basically, Gove has not only decided to extand school hours and term times to ridicolous times which risks their safety and jeposides their time to develop their social interactions with their family; but also he has decided that we need to put young children hardly able to spell their names by testing them and seeing what they can do, wasting time when we already have the data that we need. So then Gove, why are you putting our future generations education at risk just so that the numbers on your desk seem a little bit better? Children will be children they are not statistics. 

I have often said and will stick by it, that politicians that have no experience with children or our education system shouldn't be coming up with new policies and ideas when they haven't been out there and seen how it can affect the children, teachers, parents and our day to day lifestyle. If these policies go ahead then the Conservatives are going to lose the voters of families and teachers across the country and we're going to have a culture where children are over-worked and they have no idea how to climb a tree or be a child and don't have the vital social developments to actually participate in the modern society that we have today. I'm going to end this now, because I could go on forever but I think that this has said enough for the time being...