Learning in the early years of life is about having fun. This is obvious in the way young mammals in particular interact with their world. Kittens, puppies, and children all play to learn and in doing so have fun. Unfortunately, humans are the only species that transition its young from being learners to being students.
This is achieved through practices imposed in school. Fun is replaced by performance. Schools start to assess and grade in a way that is to benefit a new master. This can have a detrimental impact on learning creating a fear of being shamed. When a child starts to walk parents don't grade them, but when they start to read at school teachers do!
Data is extremely useful. The world has been transformed by data on the back of the exploding power of computers to analyse, manipulate and identify patterns within it. In the teaching and learning process the focus on data has become a world wide phenomena. Test scores, data about socio economic factors of individuals, communities and nations and the willingness for comparisons to be made have dominated educational discourse.
However, how data is used is not values free, and when it is used to assess and sort it can have significant consequences for the learner, and indeed the teacher. Well before organisations like the OECD and PISA came to be teachers used data for sorting, 'grading' and accountability purposes. It has been used to offer feedback to students and their parents through grades (until recently often unmoderated) and 'position in class' rankings. It has become both a carrot and a stick in a culture of increasing performativity.
Being shamed because of a grade in the early years of school can have a lifelong impact. But we impose this upon learners very early in their schooling journey.
Learning is hard to measure. Play is fundamental to learning, and especially in the early years of life but putting a score on play is impossible. In many ways what we do measure in schools are proxies to learning. We measure reading levels, test scores and grades. What we often overlook is the impact 'failure' can have on a learner.