As the mother of a Year 6 pupil and the partner of a primary school teacher, I just don't understand this Sats boycott

It’s all very well to boycott certain exams but you have to bear in mind that these results are used to tackle education inequality

I have a sneaking sense that panic over testing at primary level may be fuelled by the confidence that one’s own child’s school would be fine anyway (PA)

Looking at the current crop of Sats-related headlines, I can’t help but worry. Or rather, I can’t help but worry at how little I’m worrying. Surely I – partner of a primary school teacher, mother of a Year 6 pupil – ought to be more worried than most. Yet somehow, the whole Sats hoo-hah is passing us by.

My son has not been sent home with bundles of Sats practice papers to pore over. In the playground with him and his classmates, I get no sense of impending doom. While one or two parents have been taking it more seriously, even to the extent of sending their children to Sats tutors, for most it’s been a non-event. The main concern is transition to secondary school, where we’ve already been told that Sats results will not be playing any significant role.

Which is why I find the idea of Sats boycotts more than a little bewildering. Are my children really embroiled in “a high stakes testing system”? Are the maths and English papers my son’s about to take genuinely “pointless and damaging”? Surely he’s just going to sit in a room and answer some questions, the results of which will not be used to brand him forever, but to measure his school’s performance. At the risk of sounding flippant, shouldn’t we all just chill?

It’s not that I don’t see any problem at all with Sats. They’re an imperfect way of attempting to make schools accountable, narrowing the focus of studies just when children ought to be encountering greater breadth.

Much of what is tested seems arbitrary and unimaginative. Shouldn’t Key Stages 1 and 2 be spent exploring the world, not learning the difference between subordinate clauses and fronted adverbials? When my sons write stories, they proudly boast of how many connectives and relative clauses they’ve used. Is this how learning should be?

Probably not, but does that make boycotts the answer? Rather than get angry at the current system, we need to ask ourselves what we’d like to see in its place.

Like most parents and guardians, I’d like my kids to have a great, mind-expanding education. I’d like it to take place at a normal state school, as opposed to one of those in a catchment area so expensive it might as well be private. I’d like their teachers to be variations on Miss Jean Brodie and Mr Keating in Dead Poets Society – rule breakers, but in a delightfully eccentric, inspiring way. I’d like the school to respect my influence as a parent, but not to demand too much of me when I’m busy with other things. Furthermore, I’d like the curriculum to be slanted so my own kids always did slightly better – but not ostentatiously better – than everyone else’s.

Basically, if I could have all these things I would know – just know – that my children’s school was a good one without any of this testing nonsense.

Such a school is not currently on offer. What’s more, I think as parents we need to recognise the complex mix of idealism, class bias, generational defensiveness and self-interest that feeds into our beliefs about how education should work. I have a sneaking sense that panic over testing at primary level may be fuelled by the confidence that one’s own child’s school would be fine anyway. That may be so, but with genuine inequality in education, how do we ensure the basics are covered for all?

We could go back to the days when the only accountability measures were for religious and physical education (which might at least be fitting for the Brexit age). My partner prefers the idea of a more ongoing, regular relationship with Ofsted, prompting general reflection on improvement rather than box ticking and one-word verdicts. Whatever we decide, solutions must come via the careful unpicking and re-examining of what we already have, rather than headline-grabbing about turns.

We have a situation in which right and left have spent decades fighting over whether “the problem” with the British education system is dumbing down or over-testing, feckless parents or complaining teachers. One thing’s for sure, and that is that there will always a “problem”. What we mustn’t do is make this into an ideological battle our children have to fight. The real risk with constant complaining is that we end up suggesting that the final product – young school leavers – are in some way defective.

As adults we can and should explain to children that Sats simply aren’t the end of the world. To liberals like me, this can feel counterintuitive (wouldn’t a boycott be sticking it to The Man?), but right now anxiety is fuelling anxiety. The pressure on teachers is enormous, but we can decide whether or not this has to trickle down.