Enough is Enough
Let’s start with the children, shall we? I mean this is where we as schools would always say we start from – putting children truly at the heart. We have created a system where statutory tests determine the curriculum we teach. There are schools across the UK where Maths and English is taught all morning and all afternoon – or where there are interventions all afternoons for children not ‘meeting standards’ where they are then missing out on all the other diverse subjects schools should be teaching. It’s a system where leaders and teachers sometimes manipulate data and even take part in somehow controlling the outcomes of the tests – obviously one would question any leader who participates in this and doesn’t lead with anything but integrity – but this is the system that is created – where leaders even feel this is a necessity – to put their jobs at risk because of the pressure to perform. This is why phonics is often taught all day to Key Stage 1 children, small groups taken out to ‘catch up’ with the sounds they just haven’t grasped – where children are given a diet rich in remembering how to take the