Motivation

Poor Jimbo. He came home at the end of term with an envelope full of exam papers and tasks to help him to prepare for his SATs tests which are in 3 weeks time. I didn't push him last week, as I really do believe that children should be children and should have their holidays to play and have a break from school. I am almost managing to achieve this in my own school holidays sometimes!

However, time is marching on and he returns to school next Monday. With a busy weekend ahead, that means that he has to get the work done by Friday, so we agreed a plan of attack last night.

Fair play to him, he came home this afternoon and at 5.10pm we both sat down at the kitchen table, me with my laptop and a list of admin jobs to do, and Jimbo with his English reading paper. 15 minutes reading time, 45 minutes to complete the answer booklet. Bless him, he did it in self enforced exam conditions, pointedly ignoring me for 50 minutes and only stopping to tell me that taking a photo of him was distracting. So I stopped. I asked if he needed help and he said "No Mum, it's exam conditions and I am not allowed help". At 11 years old, he understands this, but in my head I am returning to questions of stress and pressure and whether it is really necessary to subject children to examinations at that age. However, I will not start that discussion because it opens a huge can of worms, where my parent voice says one thing, but my school leader voice says another.

I know one thing - my experience with Jimbo's 'stress' over preparing for these exams has certainly coloured my conversations with my senior students recently, with me exercising a lot more restraint and offering even more support than normal to try to help manage the stress for our Year 11s. Well, the ones who are working to the best of their ability anyway!

Off to do tea and then to clear the decks workwise. I fully intend to have my holiday to myself when it starts next week, apart from 2 days which I have allocated for work.

Have a great evening folks.