The Isle of Wight Group believes that English pupils have too many formal assessments instigated by the Government.  The majority of the resulting data is of little overall use either to the school or potential employers.  With this emphasis on testing, creativity in teaching is being stifled.

The data resulting from these assessments is used for the following purposes:

·         To monitor individual progress

·         To predict an individual’s potential grades

·         To identify under-achievers

·         To measure teachers’ performance

·         To publicise data in the form of school league tables (both local and national), thereby identifying “good” or “bad” schools.

Our group is interested in how pupils are assessed in other countries. The following table shows the assessments performed in England.

Interested?  Please follow the Read More link.  Want to discuss assessment practices?  Please go to the Discussion Forum under the Network Menu

This, 2009, is Darwin’s year. But, writes David Attenborough (Daily Telegraph 3/3/2009) who will be the next scientific visionary to revolutionise the way we see the world? Whoever they are, they will need their natural curiosity about the world to be nutured and developed in childhood. They will need teachers to engage them and scientists to inspire them. They will need to be challenged by what they learn and by the questions that remain unanswered.

In celebration of Darwin’s year The Wellcome Trust, a British Medical Research charity, is providing schools with experiments and activities for children of every age; activities rooted in Darwin’s work but full of contemporary science.. Children will learn to apply the scientific method to the world around them.

But will they? What time for discovery? Barely a few weeks remain before statutory examinations take place; before children sit in rows in large halls regurgitating facts that have been fed, revised, tested, re-fed, revised and re-tested. What science teacher will have the courage to step off this train to undertake Darwinian investigations? As an ex science teacher, the Wellcome Trust pack would have been left unopened on my desk in favour of pushing my class towards good GCSE results.

EDUCARE, the stem of the word we know today as education, means to draw out. But teachers are being trained to see children as vacuums to be filled with knowledge. This group has a particular concern for clever children right up to VI Form level. To find out more about the goals of the Wight group?  Follow the Read More link