Lord Lucas, quoted this week in TES, paints a frightening picture of a generation of aspirant children blighted by a tortuous regime of factory-style exam preparation in today’s prep schools. Could the pressure to get children into the best selective senior schools be persuading affluent parents to subject their offspring to the dulling effect of relentless formulaic learning, devoid of creativity, breadth and freedom of thought? Is the system such that the only way to compete is to join the treadmill?
Are the brightest children being taught not to think for themselves but instead to learn how to do what the test requires? As the head of exactly the sort of high-performing preparatory school that might be suspected of such tactics my categorical answer is: no!
Throughout my career teaching in prep schools, I have winced at the occasional over-hyping of exams and entrance tests, which I have sometimes seen in colleagues or ambitious parents. “Don’t forget you will need to know this for your Common Entrance” has been an oft-repeated refrain. This well-intentioned desire to spur children on and to encourage them to greatness is invariably counter-productive, in my view.
Too often the resulting anxiety and pressure in our young has the reverse effect, with the crippling fear of failure stifling their performance and persuading them to sacrifice all that is not part of this narrow goal. In the process, they often give up the very things that may be far stronger drivers of success, not only in the artificial world of exams but also in the real world of life and work that lies beyond.
Of course children at my school take exams. They sit national tests at key stage 2 and achieve excellent results in these as well as in the Common Entrance and scholarship tests often taken at 13. Yet there is no “exam factory” in sight. Neither do we select pupils on the basis of academic ability.
Our excellent results are achieved not by narrowing but by broadening - giving pupils the best possible chance to discover where their talents and interests lie. Both in word and in deed, we value achievements in art, technology, computer science, drama, sport, music and countless other areas as much as we value achievements in written examinations. Success in any one of these areas tends to increase a child’s general self-confidence and hence their motivation, resilience and results in subjects they find difficult.
Even in examination subjects, we feed our pupils a diet of open-ended questions, extension beyond the curriculum and ambition to create and innovate. We prepare for exams in moderation. We do not try to rehearse children for one kind of expected question but instead focus on giving children the depth of understanding and thinking skills to tackle any question.
This is the very opposite of what might be expected in an “exam factory” and proof, perhaps, that if you get education right, results take care of themselves.
Nick Bevington is headteacher at Town Close School in Norwich
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