As an ‘English Education’ blog I haven’t written much lately on educational matters, certainly not in venting my dissatisfaction about political decision making, and have instead concentrated more on posting poems and reviews, these latter as passionately important to me and definitely far more pleasant to share.

However, I have recently had a response from Lucy Powell, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, regarding an email I had sent her presenting concerns about Nicky Morgan’s expressions of wanting to re-introduce testing across the curriculum [details in my email below].

I am sharing this communication for two important reasons: firstly, I am always keen to express my dissatisfaction with Tory educational decision-making as it is usually so appalling; and, secondly, I have always also expressed similar whenever Labour policies deserve scrutiny and criticism, and Powell’s response to me is so disappointingly bland that I am presenting it here to demonstrate the apparent lack of any engagement with my precise points or even the broader and general issue of testing in schools.

Whilst Powell expresses her newness to her position, and the alleged high level of correspondence since she attained her post as reasons for the delay in response, her letter’s largely formulaic template and then glancing reference to ‘methods of examination in our school system’ demonstrate a lack of urgent interest, in-depth understanding or, as I have said, prompted engagement with the issue I presented.

This isn’t good enough.

My email, sent November 2015:

Dear Lucy Powell,

I am writing to enquire if as Shadow Secretary of State for Education you will be challenging Nicky Morgan’s recent announcement of a need to review National Curriculum testing, considering these particularly for 7 year olds, and asserting yet again the necessity to implement a testing regime in order to be ‘robust’ in raising standards.

There are so many fatuous soundbites in such declarations, and as an English teacher of 30 years – now retired but still writing educational texts, and a veteran [!] Senior Examiner at GCSE – I am looking to the Labour Party to challenge this on the basis of an understanding of teaching and learning and how an informed curriculum aids student progress and improvement rather than testing.

I understand there is a large landscape for the proposed review, so my particular interest, obviously, is with English teaching and testing. This subject is notoriously difficult to break down into discrete areas of understanding and skills, and the tests and their designers therefore actually substitute an understanding of this difficulty with, for example in Writing, the supply of generally irrelevant discrete language-knowledge questions [sample KS2 English Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling tests as worrying evidence of this]. This is bad/wrong enough, but mark schemes and the examiners controlled by these then impose further narrow parameters on rewarding students for already narrowed opportunities to demonstrate meaningful writing skills. It is therefore an educational façade and farce.

The knock-on effect is, clearly, that students are taught to the tests rather than focusing on improving Writing, or worse, engaging with Writing as an energetic and engaging element of English and as a crucial life skill.

It is also obvious that such tests essentially exist to provide a measurable aspect of notional competence, and a measurement that is then used to make comparisons on and observations about ‘standards’.

Ed Balls abolished Key Stage 3 SATs in 2008 as a recognition, I believe, of their unreliability. I am hoping that Labour will continue to oppose any return to these or indeed any expansion to other ages. My view is that whilst the issues of ‘stress’ and ‘pressure’ on young people is an absolutely valid and pertinent aspect of why these tests should be resisted, I would like to see some trenchant political commentary from Labour on how such tests are educationally unsound. I would like to see Labour taking a stand, as it currently is on so many other important issues, that is based on more than mere counter soundbites.

I would welcome supplying any further detail to support my more general observations here. I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,
Mike Ferguson

Powell’s email, sent January 2016:

Dear Mike,

Thank you for getting in touch. I apologise for the delayed response but as you can appreciate, I have been inundated with correspondence since my appointment as Shadow Education Secretary.

I appreciate the time you have taken to raise your concerns with me. I am passionate about education. My children attend the same schools in Manchester that I do and practically everyone in my family works in education as teacher or head teachers.

It is fantastic to hear from someone who is passionate and experienced in teaching. I receive many emails from concerned parents and teachers about methods of examination in our schools system. I will bear in mind your suggestions as the Shadow Education team move forward to develop Labour policy.

Once again, I appreciate the time you have taken to share these suggestions with me. I hope you can take some comfort in the knowledge that I use the information and suggestions received when discussing education policy with the Shadow Education team and when holding the Government to account in Parliament.

Kind regards,

Lucy Powell