Press Release

Voice calls for end to “obsessive testing regime”

12 May 2008

Commenting ahead of tonight’s Panorama, “Tested to Destruction”, and tomorrow’s Commons Committee report on testing, the General Secretary of Voice: the union for education professionals has called on the Westminster Government to reconsider its examinations policy and follow the example of Wales.

Philip Parkin said: “We are pleased that both Panorama and the Committee report will highlight the excessive and counter-productive pressure excessive testing places on both pupils and those who teach them.

“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.  We start testing earlier. We test more frequently. We test more subjects in this country than elsewhere.

“We need to move education away from rigid teaching to tests under a restricted curriculum in order to allow more appropriate measures of individual pupils’ performance and development, and a broader, more rounded education.

“At the moment it seems that these tests are designed to suit the Government’s agenda rather than the interests of pupils. 

“We need to put the power back into the hands of the people who are the experts in this – the teachers and fellow education professionals – rather than have everything controlled rigidly by central government.

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

“We would like to see England follow the lead set by Wales and scrap SATs.”