Tests, tests and more tests, they are all we seem to worry about these days. From SAT's at KS2 to A-Levels to University and driving tests. Our society is built around these pieces of paper and yet some of the most influential people in the world didn't even achieve 5 GCSE level qualifications, Lord Alan Sugar,Simon Cowell and Joss Stone to name but a few. This system fails a large amount of our young people and our society as a whole. At the end of the day, would you rather have someone operate on you (medically) who had a plethora of degrees and has spent most of their time in university or somebody who has a proven track record and experience of performing the operation successfully and safely? I know I'd certainly have the one with real life experience.
I suppose my real niggle with tests is that they only test you on a certain slither of the cake, not the cake as a whole. I've seen many teachers come through the education system and one thing I notice is that those who have done a straight teaching course find that they learn so much more from actually teaching in the class than on the course. I mean when teaching are we really thinking about the theories studied at university or are we trying to cater to an individual child's needs, adapting and changing things as we teach?
Modern day tests are in essence just memory tests. How many of us spent weeks and months revising for a test, finished it never coming back to the content again. I have a certificate to say I achieved a GCSE in maths but I couldn't tell you half of the stuff I learnt for that exam, . I have a GCSE in ICT but the test proved useless as I had I had already taught myself how to do what it needed me to do years before. On the test I got a C (if memory serves me correct) yet in the workplace I am always the person everyone comes to for ICT support. I myself could also, and frequently do at work, sit down with a history book, flicking through, talking and teaching a child about hundreds of different eras of history in great detail, but ask me to write an essay on that subject and it wouldn't be anywhere near half as good. We, as teachers, see day to day that every child is born to be and do a different thing. School gives children the opportunity to discover what their thing in life is. Tests often shatter and destroy those aspirations. A test does not test what you know it tests what you have remembered about a small snippet of that whole subject.
Maths tests may at first seem like the only good test. After all it is not down to somebodies opinion of what was right but a definite answer e.g. 1+3=4. However these tests and questions do not get the angelic award it at first seems they deserve. Modern day mathematics tests set out to deceive and trick a child, certainly in my opinion anyway. The amount of times in test conditions I've been asked "what does it mean when it says the difference between 17 and 5?" and I have had to say" I'm really sorry I cannot tell you" knowing full well that that child can do subtraction and is extremely good at it, they have merely forgotten what it meant in that context. To the marker they haven't a clue as this poor child has then proceeded to write that 17 has one ten and seven units whilst 5 has just five units. Technically that child is not wrong, that is a valid difference between 17 and 5, yet the marker will give them a big fat zero.
A great example of where testing fails is that the marking and judging is usually done by a person. As we know all people are all different, we like different things and if somebody submits a piece of artwork to be marked, that persons opinion is all that matters. If you impress them, well done your in luck, they like it and naturally the mark will go up. However if it is not to their taste unlucky I'm afraid. We all do it, some people find Vincent Van Gough's paintings to be hideous, to some they are beautiful works of art. Likewise this can apply to many different areas, in literacy if I write a short story and you mark it, again you might think it utter tosh but the next guy might not be able to put it down. At the end of this month I submit my end of module assignment for a university course I am doing, It will go off electronically to somebody to sit and read through. Then this person will read through a checklist and decide what mark I deserve. It literally wont really matter what I put in my exam really as long as I tick the boxes and put what they want to hear.
Tests are good for those people who naturally can write 100''s of words where a sentence will do, people who can remember the facts and figures that they need to know for their exam next week and I agree it does work for some. But for the rest of us the test system is a failure. Tests shouldn't be abolished but test people on more practical things not just theories.
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