This year is my eighth year teaching kids who are out of school. I generally teach them by themselves, in their home and we tend to chat a lot in between the curriculum activities. They can be out of school due to disruptive behaviour or crippling anxiety or any form of inability to cope in a school environment - no two stories are the same and I consider it a real privilege to gain their confidence and trust over the months we work together.
While each student obviously has their own story, there are two patterns that have become too clear in the conversations I have had over the years and I wanted to share these general trends with you. Firstly, most of these kids feel that the reasons things didn't work out well for them are external; they feel it is someone else's fault. Secondly, most of these kids feel that the solution to their predicament is external; someone else is going to solve their current situation. The fault is out there and the answer is out there.
Recently, in the lead up to Key Stage 2 SATs, I have read many posts complaining about how much pressure the schools are putting on our eleven year olds. There is anger at the system - why are our kids being subjected to testing at all? There is resentment of individual schools or teachers - why are the kids being overloaded with past papers at the expense of creative learning experiences? There is concern about individual kids - how can it be acceptable that they are waking crying in fear of failure? There is criticism of the actual test papers - how can our kids be expected to pass tests that many adults are claiming to find impossible?
It got me thinking about where I stand in all of this.
In every conversation I've had with friends regarding any of the above complaints, I found myself commiserating and nodding along to the anger and resentment. It's hard not to see these points of view. However, I think we are doing our kids a real disservice by approaching their experience in this way. Yes, the system is uncomfortable. Yes, the kids are worked incredibly hard to learn grammar and maths. Yes, the tests are flipping challenging. But how much is our handling of all of this contributing to their negative experience?
Like it or not, these tests are here for the entire state-educated nation. We can hate them but the kids are still having to sit them. The popular approach has been to reassure kids that these tests aren't testing them, they are testing the school. They don't need to worry about them or work hard for them as the school are at fault for putting them in this horrible situation. Again, I took part in this rationale and can see its short term benefits. However, I have changed my tune. I realised that, in giving our kids these platitudes, we are planting the early seeds of what I'm now seeing in the teenagers who have fallen out of the system. We're effectively saying it is not their responsibility to work hard, it is the school's. Their teacher/school is at fault for requiring this of them. The fault is out there and the answer is out there.
My eleven year old has had to work incredibly hard this year but I am grateful for this. I want him to be a hard worker. I don't want him to ever think that it is anyone's responsibility other than his for him to work hard. I want him to understand that the consequences of not working hard will be his to own - he can't throw that blame to anyone else. By criticising the schools and cuddling them close, aren't we communicating that they should resent and blame people who expect them to work hard and need us to protect them from any such people? How will this work when they carry this through to Year Ten? To their first job? To their relationships?
I hear the shouts that they are just kids - I get it, I do. But I have seen these patterns spread from the early years and cause much bigger hurdles in the later years that I think it is really important that we really take our own stand on who we want our kids to be. Kids don't forget the times you have let them off the hook or criticised their teachers. These will be hurled back at you when you are trying to get them to stay focused at the start of Year 9. Surely we want them to grow up knowing that they have the power to forge their own paths and the responsibility for their own part in following them.
This is also my eighth year marking the SATs. I have to say that I was shocked when I first saw the level of grammar that these kids were expected to understand. This year, it has been a quiet pleasure to see how they are all rising to the occasion. This generation really know their stuff when it comes to reading and writing and that is such a powerful life tool. If you can write well then you can think well and that is surely a gift we'd like our kids to have. Admittedly, the tests are causing external havoc but the kids are quietly getting on and working hard and I am really proud of them. May they always know they can do hard things.
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