Many have come out recently in Britain at the over testing in Britian of our children. Being brought up in the British system and currently attending an American University I have had the benefits of seeing the pros and cons of both systems. It is true that there is a lot of testing in British schools but under the American system there seems to be a system of near constant testing.

The problem it seems to me in Britain is not the amount of testing but the type of testing. In Britain we have a system of large nationwide testing of school students with many of the tests pretending to amount to some sort of qualification. These tests generaly take a large amount of time out of school time with long testing periods and revision periods set aside

Under the American system they have much more frequent, short and internal testing. Many of these tests do not take any time out of the schedule to prepare. For example I have my final exams for my first year of my masters degree comming up this month and my courses finish the week before the exams. Other tests are conducted during the semester. This keeps students on their toes and the short revision periods means that students have to have kept up with the class during the course of the semester.

Furthermore many of the tests count. At my University you have to pass all of your courses to get your degree and the standard is set quite high. During my undergraduate in the UK you could make up for failing some classes by getting higher marks on the others and it was almost impossible not to get a degree at the end of it.

My reccomendations therefore for reforming the schools system in Britain are as follows.

Firstly have fewer nationwide large assements and leave a large amount of testing up to the individual schools.

Seccondly, make the tests count by demanding higher standards of the students.

Although the examples I have used have been from university I believe that they can be equally applied to schools. Do we really need nationwide testing taking place with SATs GCSEs, AS, and A-levels? Does anyone think that awarding GCSEs at grade G as a pass is a worthwhile activity?