Dear Mr Gove (Part One)

Dear Mr Gove,

I hope you are well, etc.

There's a lot I would like to say in this letter. I would like to talk to you about the improvements in the rigour of the state school curriculum; your love of History as an academic discipline; your scorn for 'soft subjects'; your belief that teachers do not need a teaching qualification in order to teach; your perception that the Chinese system of education is superior to the British; your absolute, deep-soul conviction that state schools are all bad and private schools are all good; your belief that Shakespeare and Algebra are not a compulsory part of the state school curriculum; and, above all, what is meant by the term 'comprehensive education.' You see, to my mind (which is a state-educated mind, I admit), the question we ought to be asking is not, 'How do we give everyone an education that is academically rigorous, full of Shakespeare and Algebra and correct usage of the semi-colon?' but 'How do we create a system of education that is fair to everyone?'

More of that another day.

( You will notice that, despite the largely formal nature of this correspondence, I often use contractions instead of typing two full words. I choose to do this because it speeds things up and, as a busy man, I think you will appreciate this. Please do not attribute such colloquialisms to the fact that I had a bog-standard state education. I have also not used the Harvard system of referencing, but if you would like to know more about anything I have referred to, please contact me and I shall send you a bibliography.)

First, I would like to speak to you about your plans to formally test four-year-olds upon their first entry to Reception. I know others have done this before me and you've dismissed their concerns, so I am not writing with any hope of changing your views. I am writing because, as someone who is probably as passionate about this country's education as you are, I cannot not write because not to write would be apathetic, and on the matter of education, I cannot be apathetic.

I realise that the tests you propose are not formal exams. In theory, children shouldn't even be aware that they are being tested, since these will be friendly tests, done on a one-to-one basis (with someone who is, nevertheless, almost a complete stranger to the child). Your argument is that such testing will give teachers a 'baseline' from which to work. The teacher will know, from the result, what the child is capable of and therefore the level of work the child ought to be given.

This reasoning appears sound enough. However, I wonder whether you are aware that teachers are already continually making these assessments, without formally testing the children? Many children have been to pre-school before they go to Reception, and pre-schools will have presented the Reception teacher with a detailed report on every child, based on skilled and detailed observations. Teachers' professional skills enable them to discern a child's current ability without subjecting the child to a formal test.

I say 'current ability' because it is my belief - and no doubt someone else has theorised this somewhere, but I do not know who or where - that individual intellect and the capacity for learning are not fixed concepts. A child's capacity for learning will be in a state of flux throughout their school career, and one who appears to be dull-witted at four might have blossomed into a genius by 17 (and vice versa).

You are no doubt familiar with Abraham Maslow's 1943 theory of the hierarchy of needs. He proposes a pyramid of human need, with the base of the pyramid being physiological. The most fundamental needs of a human being are provided by air and water. Once these have been achieved, we can go on to requiring safety: a roof over our heads and some money to keep us alive. Next, we require a sense of love and belonging, provided by friends and family. After that, we seek self esteem and confidence. The very last thing we seek is self-actualisation, provided through fulfilment of our talents.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs, therefore, would suggest that the capacity for an individual to have a successful formal education rests on a number of things already being in place. The child must be healthy. The child must feel safe. The child needs to have left a home that morning where there is an adult presence which has given them a sense of well-being. If these things are not in place, the child cannot be reasonably expected to perform at their best.

Throughout a child's school career, many of these things will change. Parental separation, a period of ill-health, an episode of bereavement... All of these things can affect a child's ability to learn and perform at their highest level. The child might come from a home where there isn't enough food, or enough money, or enough love. Academic ability is likely to be impaired when the child is confronted with life traumas. A good school, with a high level of pastoral care, will recognise this and support will be put in place, but what value are you placing on pastoral care? I have followed your speeches closely, and haven't seen any mention yet of how individual schools can support the mental and emotional well-being of their most vulnerable children, in order that those children can go on to fulfil their potential.

And what of the four-year-old, as yet unknown to their Reception teacher?  The teacher or a teaching assistant will carry out a test on the child in their first few days at school, and will decide, based on those results, how able (or not able) that child might be. Although relentless testing already exists in the Early Years setting, this test at the very beginning of a child's education will formalise the process further, creating an official label from the very first week of school: bright, average, weak.

Once such a label has been applied, it is very difficult for a child to escape from it. You will probably be familiar with the Pygmalion effect, a term which derives from studies by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, and which suggests that the higher the expectation placed on people, the better they perform. Their study showed that if teachers were led to expect enhanced performance from some children, then the children did indeed show that enhancement. The golem effect, by contrast, demonstrates that the converse is also true: low expectations lead to a decrease in performance.

You will see by now that I am concerned about this development and what it might do to the future of someone who has only just set out on their educational journey. I wouldn't like my daughter to be formally tested on a day when she has, for example, steadfastly refused to eat her breakfast, or when her father is working away from home and she is more concerned with how much she misses him than she is of the fact that five 2s are 10.

A child's ability and capacity for academic achievement cannot be measured at the age of four, on a cold morning in September, through a test of whether she can understand the concept of 25 or read about a cat on a mat. The child needs to be seen holistically: as a personality, as part of a family, as a person with four years of experience behind them that has shaped who they are when they first walk into a classroom. Only once this has been done should we start to speculate - because at four years old, we can only speculate - about their potential. And even then, all we should really be certain of is the power of every child to surprise us.