Reading Writing & Arithmetic

This week, I took my UK literacy and numeracy exams.  ALL teachers have to take these two exams regardless of their teaching level or their subject area -- nursery teachers all the way up to Calculus III teachers!

I was actually REALLY worried about these exams.  But not in the usual compliment-fishing kind of way -- nope, I was worried about the format and, well, the Britishy-ness of them.

Panic coursed through me on the spelling section.  About 1800 words (at least!) are spelled differently in the UK.  Amanda Mazzaro -- thanks for this webpage about all the differences!
Now add in some of the usual English stumbling blocks like "occurrence" vs. "occurance" vs. "occurrance"...  and we wonder why kids and English-language-learners can't frakin' spell!?!?

And don't get me started on British grammar -- no Oxford comma (ever!) and no periods after Mr./Mrs./Ms. and a distinct lack of commas for clauses and a very liberal use of parentheses.
As a self-and-community-assessed grammar-queen, I found myself shouting obscenities during my practice exams (and whispering them during the actual exams...)

For the numeracy section, I thought I'd have no worries.  BUT, the format!  Nearly half the exam is orally-presented word problems -- and you only have 18 SECONDS to solve each one.  And the lady only reads the problem twice.  Although the content isn't hard (especially if you're practiced and in the teaching realm), the problems are meant to confuse you and no calculators are allowed.

For example:

Absolutely nothing hard about the problem, right?
Now try to scribble down all the details (this text isn't up on screen; it's just the nice British lady reading through the headphones) and don't mix up the UK's level names with the actual data... arrrgh!!


For you educators who feel taxed by the requirement to ensure test questions have no contextual bias, I really encourage you to try taking a couple exams from the UK (like, actually take them yourself!).  For the first time, I really felt the frustration of being distracted by irrelevant context rather than being able to focus on relevant content.

See if you'd be considered literate in the UK!  Here are links to practice the literacy exams and the numeracy exams :-)