Tests and targets deny children their childhood

A landmark study of primary schools has called for teachers to be freed of targets. Government insistence that schools focus on literacy and numeracy at the expense of creative teaching is, “impoverishing children’s lives.”

The findings out on Friday are from the biggest review of the primary school curriculum in 40 years. It claims the curriculum has been turned into a “political battleground” and accused the government of 'excessive prescription and micro-management'.

Creative subjects are being 'squeezed out' as primary schools concentrate on literacy and numeracy, which take up nearly half the school week, the Cambridge University review of the primary curriculum found. Children are leaving school lacking knowledge about the arts and humanities having spent too many years "tied to a desk" learning times tables, the head of the review, Robin Alexander, said. "Our argument is that their education, and to some degree their lives, are impoverished if they have received an education that is so fundamentally deficient," he said.

The report says schools should be freed of Sats and league tables so that they can make more decisions about what and how they teach. A curriculum that values knowledge and understanding as well as basic skills should be brought in, it says. Independent of the government and funded through charitable donations, the review is based on three years of research. It marks 40 years since the last wholesale review of primary education and presents a blueprint for a curriculum that would give teachers control of 30% of their time to teach what they want.

Teaching unions, headteachers and major educational bodies all backed the plans, setting the government on a collision course with schools if it fails to consider the proposals. Christine Blower, acting general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, told the Guardian newspaper the proposals "have depth, credibility and, above all, respond to the realities of the primary classroom".

Giving children the chance of a happy childhood is central to SOS Children's mission. SOS Children also runs schools around the world, to provide an education to even the most disadvantaged children. SOS Children produces teaching resources for UK children and runs school linking projects.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children