Date published: 2007/08/11
The BBC says:
Many schools spend too long drilling children to pass national tests instead of giving them a proper education, the government's exams watchdog has warned.
Chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority Ken Boston said tests should not be used to achieve growth, but to measure it.
What a surprise. The government and the media obsess on test results. And how schools are treated by the government and the community is largedly determined by test results. So it is not surprising that schools and teachers teach to the test. This has been the case to some extent for a long time in English education (e.g. the maths tripos exam in Cambridge University has for a long time been biased towards regurgitation of notes, and this is at university, not school, level). But it is much worse now, thanks to the national obsession with school tests as an indication of success and failure.
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