‘SATs – Tick one box’

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Almost all parents and children in year 6 at primary school will have had many discussions about SATs - Standard Assessment Tests. You will hear mixed opinions about the relevance and if indeed they are important, and if so to whom?

My 11 year-old daughter, has spent much of her time this year devoted to working on Maths, English (grammar, punctuation, spelling and reading) by working though many practice papers. The ‘assessments’ (we used to call them tests) were planned for May 2020. The lockdown CV19 crisis had an unexpected impact on doing the SATs - basically they were abandoned.

Bizarrely enough, I was quite disappointed; on one hand I feel they can put unnecessary stress on young children, on the other I wanted to know what she would have got. I like numbers, scores, and % - I can be a bit competitive. So, we missed out or did we? All that hard work that would have been celebrated with a mass trip to the local bowling alley – do we feel a bit cheated?

So, my house is full of practice papers, scribbles, questions and booklets about Maths calculations and English grammar skills that I honestly struggle to answer.

‘SATs – Tick one box’ is my response and visual tribute to all those children and parents, who feel they lost out this year or maybe dodged a bullet.

 

After conducting a poll from local parents, 42% were fairly indifferent to if their kids took the SATs or not, 37% would have preferred them to take the assessment (yes - I am one of them) and only 8% were glad their their child didn’t have to take part this year.

 

 

This Project has now been published in European Photography Magazine - PANDEMIC PROJECTS AND COMPOSITE

No 107/108 October 2020

 

Pandemic Projects & Composite. In the greatest global drama of post-war history, photography has an eminent role to play – not only as a news medium, but also in art. Thirteen international artists respond to the pandemic: Matthias Klos, Karen Stuke, Matteo Garzonio, Ilan Godfrey, Alexandra Dietz, Nicola Bertasi, Astrid Schulz, Clair Robins, Murat Germen, Carsten Klindt, Nadirah Zakariya, Ciaran McCrickard, Ricardo Garcia Vilanova | Composite – A Curators’ Choice. A multifaceted view of contemporary photography, its concerns, topics and concepts, compiled by ten photographers nominated by ten renowned critics and curators: Helena Lea Manhartsberger (nominated by Sophia Greiff), Julie Poly (Lars Boering), Camila Falcão (Thyago Nogueira), Peter Hauser (Danaé Panchaud), Cemre Yeşil Gönenli (Sena Çakırkaya), Henrik Spohler (Urs Stahel) Ryota Kajita (Ihiro Hayami), Alba Zari (Audrey Hoareau), Grace Baey (Zhuang Wubin), David Benjamin Sherry (Lesley Martin) | Books on Cities, reviewed by Christoph Schaden: Pyongyang, New York, Beijing, Tokyo, Rome | 25 Independent Photobook Publishers | Editor’s Pick: Phillip Wang. ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com – No. 107/108, vol. 41, double issue 2020. 24 x 30 cm, 112 pages. German/English

 

 

Fancy Taking Part?

Show me your SATs practice paper art.

 

Why not ‘up-recycle’, get your family involved too, re purpose some practice papers and transform them into artworks. Although the SATs have not been completed this May. Why not make an origami trophy, weave some pages together, hole punch it, fold it, rip it, write some notes down and fold away your secrets for the future, or simply colour in the pages... And don’t forget - give yourself 3 marks!

 

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