"Life seems like all work and no play to today’s generation of five-year-olds, as the traditional childhood pleasures of the sandpit and water tray are increasingly replaced by the work-sheet and test paper, teachers complained yesterday.
Educationalists are widely agreed that learning through play is one of the best ways of engaging young children in reception and Year 1 classes. But members of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers believe that for too many young children the opportunity to play is now held out to them as a carrot that can only be enjoyed at the end of the day after they have done their “work”." (The Times)

Is this the way to run our education system? Through continual testing? Surely not.

Continual testing is not conducive towards kids developing proper knowledge, but knowing how to answer the questions set. That isn't educating kids, but drilling them with superficial 'knowledge'. But only enough to reach the 'targets' set and to pass the tests. Tests don't teach children anything, but they just keep on being added. More and more tests.

I was one of the second year to take AS levels exams (taken after the first year of A-level study). It didn't help me at all, but was a hindrance, and meant that I learnt less in those two years than I otherwise would have, since there was a set curriculum for the AS exam modules, revision time for the exams, and the exams themselves. So, instead of a year in which to expand general knowledge in the subjects and to learn the necessary skills, we had a year in which we did the same as the year before for GCSEs. Except a little bit more in-depth.

Continual testing bores everyone. Put less stress on testing and more on knowledge. Five year-olds have yet to develop fully, and need a transition from reception-level schooling to that of formal schooling. They also learn best from playing and doing something that is interesting to them - and that is playing in the sand-pit and water tray, not filling in worksheet after worksheet!

Sources: The Times, BBC, The Telegraph, Daily Express