Good morning. Almost everything about adulthood stinks, but it has one important benefit: nobody can ever make you take another exam. Who among us looks back fondly on turning over a sheaf of paper to find out which particular gaps in your knowledge are about to be ruthlessly exposed? And who doesn’t feel a shiver of sympathy for the children going through the same thing today – and gratitude that at least this time, it isn’t you?
Year 6 pupils in England, who sat their key stage 2 tests (widely known as Sats, or standardised assessment tests) last week, might be justified in feeling particularly hard done by: they face far more onerous assessment than their counterparts across the rest of the UK, and can look to 10 and 11-year-olds in comparable systems from Canada to New Zealand for proof that another approach is possible.
