Standard Assessment Tests

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Snowfire
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Standard Assessment Tests

Post by Snowfire »

There's been much debated about them in recent times, here in the UK and many adults have fallen at many of the hurdles asked of our school kids, when given the test.

Is there anyone here, truthfully, without Googling, who knows what a subordinating conjunction is....apart from Spot that is. I had no idea what one was but I'm sure I use them appropriately. How essential to your future prospects is it to know ?

I understand that certain Scandinavian countries are much more relaxed about the way they educate their children and rate consistently higher than the UK over the years.

Do we put too much emphasis on these tests and put unnecessary pressure on our children, instead of maybe channelling them down appropriate avenues, according to their natural gifts and skills
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spot
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Standard Assessment Tests

Post by spot »

There is only one thing taught at primary or secondary school which could be described as academic, and that's vocabulary. What does this word, that word, the other word, mean.

The other things taught at schools - politeness, cleanliness, social intercourse - are far more vital. If they're not learned at that stage of development they're irretrievably lost. Vocabulary can be picked up at any time of life. The only advantage of learning it at school age is that school-children are sponges, and the more they soak up the more they can subsequently soak up, it's just so much easier to pick up vocabulary at school. Ideally the school will focus on teaching children how to assimilate vocabularies, how to go off and find themselves new vocabularies outside of a taught environment.

Learning a vocabulary to analyze parts of speech is interesting. If you don't have the words to do it then there's no way to think about it. The same's true of physics, history, the fine arts, car maintenance or religion.
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Snowfire
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Standard Assessment Tests

Post by Snowfire »

Judging by my own poor standards, it seems to me that one of the most important aspects of education is engaging your captured audience, rather than lecturing. My later education was too formal and alienated me rather than sparking any interest.

I got Trigonometry ..to a degree. There seemed to be a practical application for what was being explained. That made it easier to understand. I could not, however, grasp the concept of quadratic equations. I couldn't transpose them to the real world and therefore probably made them difficult to teach (do we really need to know ?). My education, albeit at an excellent school, faltered severely and have a single scraped-through pass in GCE English Language. The other seven are best not talked about.

I think my point is, is that without making things interesting, it's difficult to engage a child's mind. We should strive to make it more of an enjoyable experience. It was a miserable one for me although I have promised myself that I will learn a bit of Algebra, just for the sake of it...to show off at work
"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."

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Bruv
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Standard Assessment Tests

Post by Bruv »

Any school is only as good as it's teachers ability to make learning interesting.

I remember looking forward to art and English, and literally horrified at the thought of maths lessons. Much of that down to the teachers skill to engage.

It is relatively recently I discovered the number 9 is magic, in that it's multiples always add up to 9.............if only my maths teacher with a broad Scottish burr had told me that,I wonder sometimes if he had told me and I never understood ?

My rambling point is the focus should be on the quality of teachers, and their ability to teach. Exams, it seems to me is a way to judge the performance of teachers, for the government's benefit not for the children. Why can't the teachers assess the kids on their daily performance ? Why do exams have to be stressful anyway ?
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FourPart
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Standard Assessment Tests

Post by FourPart »

Personally I always interpret SAT as meaning Soprano, Alto, Tenor - The missing Fourth Part, of course, being 'B', for Bass.
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