On the day Education Secretary Nicky Morgan announces the requisite regular announcement for those without a clue that there will be a review of how to ‘improve standards’ by considering a ‘robust’ return [or return to a ‘robust’] testing regime, especially 7 year olds who require some robust pressures to make them better, it will be no surprise that I have had my hackles raised.

I will likely return with a carefully considered response, though I might not when we have already the wisdom of Michael Rosen’s thoughts here. I used his link to the English KS2 SPaG ample tests here [I left that misspelling for its erroneous correctness, and you can work out what was meant], and was immediately – genuinely – appalled at the model of these wholly discrete, irrelevant, unnecessarily complex [at many levels, but especially at Key Stage 2] and meaningless tests.

They have for the mindless the singular plus of being measurable. The fact they measure meaninglessness in the context of what Writing should mean, both in terms of being a skill and in the exploration [teaching] of this, is I am sure entirely lost on Morgan. She cannot possibly have an intelligent idea – linked to what Writing is – about how these tests contribute to students’ Writing experiences and improving aptitude for this.

My critique here is, therefore, to subjugate [which has nothing to do with the elusive ‘subjunctive’] with a creative riposte to the KS2 test proposals. I use for my sonnet-response one of the silly questions:

Multiple Sonnet Choice

the wind was blowing howling, actually, so we headed – for home.
headed for home.the wind – actually – blowing, so we was howling
howling, we blowing the wind – so was headed for home – actually.
the wind was blowing, howling – actually – so we headed for home.
wind howling – was blowing – so, we actually headed for the home.
home was howling. actually, we headed for the – so blowing – wind
the howling was blowing wind. so, for home – we – actually headed
home we headed for – so actually, howling – blowing was the wind.
the wind was blowing howling actually – so we headed for home.
blowing actually, we headed howling for home. – the wind was so –
so. headed for home was the wind, blowing – actually howling – we
– actually, we headed for howling home, so blowing was the wind –
we the wind – blowing, howling – so actually was headed for home.
the wind was blowing – howling, actually – so we headed for home.