| [Education For Tomorrow: No 98, 2008] Book Review Education by Numbers — the Tyranny of Testingby Warwick MansellISBN 1842751999 Politico’s £17.99 It might seem odd to be reviewing a book on the nefariousness of Britain’s current testing regime just after the government has abolished the Key Stage 3 tests. It is not. I have no doubt that Warwick Mansell’s tour de force, intellectual and marvellously researched book played no small part in undermining the government’s stand on the tests. As Anthony Seldon, Master of Wellington College, says in his foreword, “Warwick sets out in comprehensive and sometimes shocking detail how the pressure on teachers to deliver the improving test statistics by which the outside world judges them is proving counter-productive. Schools have been turning increasingly into exam factories with teaching for results replacing the development of the child’s intellect in the broadest sense ... if it’s not in the exam, it does not matter … curiosity is stifled. And young people’s deeper cultural, moral, sporting, social and spiritual faculties are marginalised by a system in which all must come second to delivering improving test and exam numbers." But Seldon’s most perceptive and prescient comment is that Warwick’s ‘sense of optimism — that the status quo does not have to be accepted — is what readers should take away from this penetrating analysis." As Warwick points out in his preface, “testing, when it focuses only on assessing the child’s capabilities and future learning needs, is potentially powerful. When it is also used to monitor the performance of the school it is inevitably corrupted. Pupils’ long-term learning needs are not always the same as the short-term requirement of the institution to maximise children’s performance in the next test. Where there is a conflict, the tendency, when so much hangs on the results for the school, is for its own needs to take precedence over those of the child." In his introduction Warwick Mansell states the bald fact that England’s children (and Kafkaesquely England’s alone — not those of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland) are now the most tested in the world. He brilliantly satirises Blair’s famous promise to prioritise “education, education, education" as “could almost be re-written as “examination, examination, examination"." He concludes by pointing out the failure of the payment by results that took place in the Victorian era and saying that “one can only hope that the demonstrable shortcomings of the current philosophy are about to precipitate a similar reaction. Education by numbers, let us pray, will soon have had its day". It’s one down, two to go. Get this book to arm yourselves to defeat any attempt to replace the Key Stage 3 tests with something similar — or worse — and go from this victory to defeat Key Stages 1 And 2 and “the tyranny of testing" forever. Hank Roberts |