Stop Testing Primary Aged Children and Give Them More Art

Benefits of Art

May 19

This week has been Mental Health Awareness Week and I have seen a variety of posts on Instagram (all helpful and positive) about self-care and easing anxiety as an adult. One of the posts that struck the biggest chord with me was this one from Rosie Johnson Illustrates.

Illustration by Rosie Johnson Illustrates

It really lit a fire under me and this is what came out…

It seems appropriate that Mental Health Awareness Week comes just after year 6 SATs and in the week when most Year 2s sit their tests.

I taught for 17 years and never saw the value in testing primary children. I now get my teaching fix through my printmaking workshops but the state of the education system still bothers me, in no small part because my wonderful and wildly creative daughter is making her way through it.

Teachers know their pupils and can better use the time to teach and enrich children’s lives rather than watch on as they are forced to administer tests that make many children cry. How is that education?

Think of all the art they could be using to express themselves instead!

I left teaching at the end of last academic year because it resulted in me having a nervous breakdown and the stress was too much to keep pushing through. I came home for the Easter holidays and didn’t stop shaking for 2 weeks.

I loved working with children and families - that was never the problem. The total lack of support from the higher levels was astounding and the effort teachers put in is not sustainable in such a stressful environment.

Children are humans NOT numbers on a spreadsheet and I think that the government have forgotten that - so mistrusting of the professionals who actually know what they’re talking about. The Ofsted culture driven by a government mostly run by people who never worried where there next meal was coming from or how their parents would pay for the school trip renders those who control education so far removed from what children need.

Image from Kind Currency Club on Instagram highlights shocking statistics about starving children.

I had serious thoughts about taking my daughter out of school for this weeks tests but her school have been so relaxed about it that I haven’t. What my feelings will be when she gets to year six (when they have to adhere to strict exam conditions) is something else altogether.

The current education system does not provide a healthy climate for children or teachers. Individual schools do what they can to support staff and pupils but the pressures heaped on them are immense.

Children need the arts to express themselves and the world needs creative minds to continue innovating and solving the problems that inevitably crop up.