High-stakes assessment in England and Singapore

Theory Into Practice, Wntr, 2003 by Kelvin Gregory, Marguerite Clarke

Influence on students

Although the SATs have few consequences for students in terms of grade promotion, the tests serve as very public and powerful labeling tools. Given that comparisons are made, and that a school's status depends on how each student performs, it is not surprising that some students feel stressed by the assessments. However, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), the group within the department of education overseeing assessment, says that "seven-year-olds are not supposed to understand that they are being tested" (BBC News, 2001). Literature published by the QCA (2002) contains the following information for the parents of children taking the SATs:

   Are the tests stressful for children? The tests only
   cover what children have been taught at school. Everyone
   involved in the tests takes great care to make
   sure that they are not stressful and are as fair as
   possible to all children. (p. 2)

While the QCA's answer does not address its own question, it does suggest that teachers are responsible for making the tests relatively stress-free. Childline is a British telephone help service for children. In 1999, it received about 800 calls pertaining to examination stress, nearly 15% of them from children under age 13 (Carver, 2000). Responding to accusations that the SATs were indeed stressing children, Kenneth Clarke, the man who introduced the present regime of school tests, claimed that primary students are only stressed by the examinations because of "over-concerned adults" (BBC News, 2000a).

An English student starting school at age 5 and leaving school at age 17 or 18 will have completed a minimum of 75 external assessments, tests, and examinations (Carver, 2000). There have been calls for the government to "drop its obsession with test results and recognize that there is much more to education and learning than striving to boost test scores to meet arbitrary targets" (Goldstein, 2001). There are signs that the English assessment system is going to undergo significant changes in the near future. Dr. Ken Boston, new chief executive of the QCA, has stated that the "testing system needs overhauling--with teachers being trusted to do more assessment themselves" (BBC News, 2002). Such a change is likely to take place shortly; since its introduction, the National Curriculum and its allied assessments have undergone significant changes at least every two years.

While the English education system has undergone many changes since World War II, its former colony, Singapore, has remained on a steady path that has its roots in the English system. Until the late 1960s, England had end-of-primary examinations used for the placement of students into streamed secondary schools. The English secondary schools were differentiated by those geared toward preparing students for college education, and those preparing students for technical careers. Singapore has similar structures in place today. The difference between England and Singapore stems, in part, from England's experiment with the devolution of power to schools throughout the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, Singapore's government was consolidating its control over education.