From Why I abandoned teaching in the Guardian.
“Hands up who has heard of assessment focuses?” The handouts went round. Brightly coloured sheets of paper, child friendly, covered in a complicated grid. “So, if you get a level 6, what will you have achieved? Look at the column on the lefthand side and the assessment focus at the top.” The rest of the lesson was spent drawing pictures to illustrate each assessment focus. The teacher explained to the children exactly why they were illustrating the “AFs” – “It’s important to understand how we mark, so that you can improve and develop.”
I have no idea what an assessment focus is, and I don’t want to know. I don’t want my children to know either. They didn’t find out at Montessori, and they aren’t going to find out at home.
Do the politicians really stop to think about what education means and what it is supposed to be for when they set up systems that result in lessons like those above?
And you don’t need to tell me that we need to know about this sort of stuff to cope with the world of work, I’ve managed extremely well in a variety of careers without this type of knowledge.
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