Sats marking was a shambles, but it’s the tests themselves that are the real issue

Last updated 11:31, Tuesday, 23 September 2008

One of the most original and entertaining excuses for missing homework that I ever heard went something like this: “Well, I was doing my homework at a table near an open window.The price we pay for this is worried children, some of whom take failure very hard, especially when it is made so public, and “teaching to the test”. No one would pretend that this does not happen.

“I had just finished it when a gust of wind blew the paper out of the window and into the garden below.

“I rushed downstairs to retrieve it and just as I got out of the door I saw a seagull swoop down, pick the paper up in its beak, and fly away into the distance.”

Even that excuse was more credible than those we have had for Sats papers still unmarked and unreturned weeks after the deadline.

There are still huge marking problems, with thousands of markers’ queries about the papers going unanswered by the company which took over the Sats arrangements this year.

Some scripts were sent back to schools unmarked and with the mark sheet attached but not filled in – some temptation, then, to fill it in with high marks and send it off to the right place.

All this is completely unacceptable for children, for parents and for teachers and schools.

It seems the company concerned won’t be doing the job in future. It also seems that hardly any other exam boards want to do it either, and who can blame them.

Although this year’s fiasco has become a national issue, there have been doubts in teachers’ minds about the accuracy of marking for some years, particularly, though not exclusively, in English tests.

Scripts have been sent back for remarking on a regular basis by very many schools, and results changed.

The system is huge and unwieldy with hundreds of thousands of scripts and vast numbers of markers.

Markers have been hard to find and training has sometimes been inadequate.

The contract for delivering the Sats arrangements was worth £156 million, hardly cheap and probably enough to build 20 new primary schools. So what is it all for?

I wonder how many employers or university admissions officers have asked students leaving school how they did in their Sats at age 11 or 14?

Of course GCSE results and A-level results do affect future careers. But the Sats simply provide a progress report for the Government on whether standards of reading, writing and maths are improving overall nationally, and for schools on how individual pupils are making progress.

This year there was a large drop in the number of pupils aged 11 who got the higher level (level five) in English.

One of the reasons was undoubtedly that the target for all schools is based on the number of level four passes.

With threats about what will happen to schools failing to meet the level four “floor” targets who can blame teachers for concentrating on that? So the more able children are kept back.

Wouldn’t it be a better idea to continue with testing but to make the whole thing a much more low key experience for pupils and for teachers, marked in schools but with outside checks and moderation to ensure consistency?

Shouldn’t we give children tests when they are ready to take them, not when they reach a particular age?

This kind of testing could be more frequent and more specific, but much easier to organise. It would give the schools and Government the information they need, in a better way.