Here I am, New Year’s Day , reading  away and listening to a selection of my favourite  classical music, while  a thought is slowly but persistently creeping into my mind....now and then knocking, initially hesitantly but now more and more perceptibly, at the door of my consciousness...

Until I cannot avoid its request and I give up, switch the music to a Beethoven’s violin concert and I let the flow of my pen (well, keyboard) make appear in black and white what I do not want to think about and admit: that yet another child has fallen victim of the narrowness of adults’ perception of what education is about, with total disregard to what education should be about.

On Wednesday last week, I was informed that one of the students who attended my after school centre (www.thechildrensclub.co.uk ) for about 3 years until October 2012, has being progressively showing signs of having gone off studying. The parents are blaming the child whom they categorically defined as ‘not interested in learning’ and basically as a thorn in the side of their well established, self constructed conviction that THEY know what their child should be doing in school and in life.

Now here a word of forewarning: I am not in the least hinting that those parents are less than totally committed to their child’s well being and happiness. They are a happy professional couple who travel for leisure and speak foreign languages. You would define them as well acquainted with the world of work and what it takes to make in business.

The child in question had worked hard at establishing herself as an independent learner; was beginning  to sort out the seeds  from  the weeds in formal education as it is dished out in our current English state school system; was growing  in self –assurance and was just about to explore fiction writing as a dream and a career ( yes, at the age of 10 she was planning to send her novels to a well known  children’s writer) when disaster stuck: her mother decided that it was now time to get ready for the secondary transfer entry exam to one of the most highly regarded secondary school in Surrey. Since then, the daughter has been subjected to 6 hours + a week preparation for what we call, in school jargon, the 11+ tests.

I was no part of that decision and the girl stopped attending my school as my advice was not heeded or needed any more. I was taken aback by this sudden change but I put it down to the high pressure parents are nowadays under when considering a school to send their children to and I kept in very good terms with the family. I am therefore not writing this out of anger at losing a client: if my intention was to get rich with teaching, I would not be spending my time writing blogs for pleasure.

I cannot help thinking how many of our children have been and will be victims of a similar situation and I am asking myself why the English education system tolerates and actually fosters the thriving of this abomination. Why is this type of testing and selection allowed in some secondary state schools? I am not talking about selective private schools but state schools. Not a word of lie: check on the schools websites in your area and see what the information about secondary transfers tells you, as a prospective parent. Are there entry test? How do you prepare your son or daughter for them? How transparent are the selection criteria? Are you allowed to request the original or a copy of your child’s test paper (probably not)? How about past papers to practise (you will be hard at finding that)?

 And then ask yourself what these tests are in aid of:  but first and foremost, look at your child not as a ‘small adult’ but as a child in a specific stage of his or her development and make sure you do not wear the lenses of what the media or the government or your neighbour with a ‘so-successful- daughter-who-now-goes-to-that-very-good-school’ bamboozles you with.

Thank you

“Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire to make him learn things, but by the endeavour always to keep burning within him that light which is called intelligence.”

-Maria Montessori

www.thechildrensclub.co.uk