I wrote this in year 9 (age 13) and just re-discovered it lurking at the back of my documents. I remember getting into heated discussions with my English teacher about why we were being made to sit these exams..
I'm not too worried what you think about this as it was merely a homework piece from a few years ago, so you can be brutally honest..
SAT’s (Standard Assessment Tasks), those exams that rule your life in year nine, are dreaded by most 12 – 14 year olds. Yet in reality, they are nothing more than statistics stuck on a league table. So with all the pressure surrounding getting good results, should you really be worried about them?
Sitting at the exam table, clock ticking, 10 minutes have past and your paper lies in front of you with merely scribbles and ink blotches filling the page. Sound familiar? Then read on…
Have you ever wondered why you have to take those exams? What is the meaning behind them? Well we are going to tell you the ins and outs of why SAT’s are made out to be so important.
Has your teacher ever told you about league tables, not football league tables, but school league tables? I can bet they haven’t. League tables combine exam results with inspections in an order leading up to “the best school”. In short, schools are competing against each other, trying to better one another in a way that seems extremely immature.
Pressuring you to get good results, telling you they mean so much, when in life they count for nothing and are immediately overwritten by GCSE and A level results. Think about it, have you ever heard people asking others what their SAT’s results were? Imagine being interviewed for a job, it’s highly unlikely that your future boss would ask you “one last thing, what were your SAT’s results? It might sound funny, but in fact it’s no laughing matter.
For 14 year olds, being bad at science, English or maths is not an option. Name-calling is common and bullying is hardly a rarity. A bad result does have a small impact as it can determine which tier of exam you take for GCSE exams, but it shouldn’t, as the results play no
part in your adult life. This just reiterates previous points made that unnecessary pressure is put on students, like you, to do well in your SAT’s.
We found an educational web site on the Internet (www.educationet.org/z0327.html), which just made our feelings stronger, it says “Ultimately SAT’s are useless to pupils and that’s why SAT’s must go.” If educational web sites are saying that, then why doesn’t the government agree? For now though there is not much you can do. Teachers don’t like them, you hate them and educational web sites call them useless, but that is the way it is and that's how it will stay unless the government has a strong change of heart.
Although you may feel helpless in this matter, if you do feel strongly about SAT’s being scrapped, talk to your school and see if there is anything that you can do to push your point further and help make SAT’s a thing of the past!
