Forget Sats exam pressure – Northern Irish children still live in the shadow of the 11-plus

Exams can be so stressful they literally become the stuff of nightmares, disturbing people’s sleep well after school days are over.

The boredom of revision, the hollow-stomached anticipation, the dread of being tested, the fear of forgetting everything you’ve learned, the pressure to perform, there are myriad ways in which sitting an exam is an unpleasant experience.

For some, it’s completely debilitating, and many good students leave education with grades that don’t reflect their ability or the hard work they’ve put in.

Of course, exams still serve a purpose. There are some jobs where speedy recall and the ability to remain calm under strain are imperative, and it would be difficult to argue against the need for a driving test.

But putting young children through the stress of exams is hard to support, and parents across the UK have been up in arms recently because of the extreme pressure their kids are under due to Sats exams, following reports of children crying, suffering nightmares and even vomiting in the run up to the tests.

Nick Gibb, the schools standards minister, told the Independent this week that he would be “very concerned” if schools were found to be making children of 10 and 11 years old feel stressed about the Sats.

He also said: “These aren’t tests that affect the future of the child. So there is absolutely no reason why any school should put pressure on young children.”

What he seems to forget is that there are thousands of children being put under pressure over tests that do affect their future, every year, right here in the UK.

In Northern Ireland, the 11-plus was abolished in 2009 – but it’s never really gone away.

Grammar schools across the region still operate an academic selection system based on an exam result, only nowadays, it’s not run by schools and some people have to pay for the pleasure of taking the test.

There are 63 selective grammar schools in Northern Ireland, and they choose which pupils to take based on the results of a test which is run by one of two organisations, AQE and GL.

The Catholic-maintained grammar schools favour the GL version, which means in some areas, children are sitting two different exams in order to increase their chances of getting into a grammar, regardless of faith.

In this case, it’s not the schools putting kids under pressure, but parents. However, many feel that they’ve been given no choice.

Many people in Northern Ireland feel that doing away with the 11-plus was the right thing to do, but it was done in completely the wrong way. The test was taken away, but schools, parents and pupils were given no alternative method for moving children from primary to secondary school. As grammar schools were not abolished alongside the test, the grand tradition of academic selection continued.

However, where pupils previously prepared for the 11-plus at school, alongside most of their peers, sitting practice tests a few times a week, before tackling the real thing in the same school, under the new regime (or lack thereof) they instead faced undertaking the whole thing outside school and using up free time at the weekend to study for and then sit the exam.

Sounds pretty bad, right? It hasn’t stopped the transfer test from gaining in popularity since it was ‘abolished’. Indeed, the terms of that ban have started rolling back, and schools are now allowed to prepare pupils for the exams during school hours.

It’s because there is no real alternative. Grammar schools, which boast, in the main, better facilities and pass rates for GCSEs and A-levels, are still more appealing to a lot of parents.

And again, nobody has come up with an alternative.

With Stormont still in disarray, the probability that a new strategy will even be discussed by the end of this year is whisper-thin.

Of course, it’s disgraceful that assembly members should be allowed to push important issues like education to one side as they dig their heels into the sand over the Irish Language Act. And it’s just as disgraceful that it’s being ignored by Westminster.

If and when Nick Gibb decides to actually do something about children feeling the pressure from Sats, he would do well to remember the thousands of 10 and 11 year olds stuck in a selection system that was supposed to be part of the past by now.