17 August 2008

The way forward after the SATs crisis

The Government were absolutely right to cancel the contract for ETS, who have overseen an absolute fiasco in the marking of this year's Key Stage 2 and 3 SATs tests. There is no way that schools would ever have had confidence in these tests with ETS in control of marking. Much of the media emphasis has been on late marking, but the problems are far more systemic with errors being reported in delivery and collection of papers, bad marking, late marking and administrative nightmares. Coupled with this ETS never managed to put a decent system in place to liaise with schools over their problems.

The Government must now explain why they chose to use ETS, despite concerns about their performance when marking similar tests overseas.

It is also time for a radical rethink of SATs as a whole. When SATs were introduced it was absolutely the right thing to do - it has led to a revolution in the use of data within schools, to the point where any school worth its salt has a real understanding of the progress every single one of its students is making. But, if this is now the case, why on earth do we then need to go through the palaver of months and months of test preparation to confirm evidence that everyone needs is already there?

My own view is that schools own assessments should now be used as the measure of standard, including replacing league tables, with a refurbished OfSted system used to moderate and confirm that schools are getting their measurement right.

It would mean more proper learning for our children, instead of teaching towards tests; it would mean schools are still accountable and parents are still able to make comparisons, but it would take away a great deal of stress and wasted effort.

But it would also lead to a much needed review of the OfStEd system,which remains (inevitably) unpopular amongst teachers, but is now increasingly having its own standards questioned. In the past at least OfStEd used to get its inspections right; the right schools were selected for Special Measures and the right schools got Outstanding reports. But there is increasing evidence that OfStEd are getting the outcomes of some of its inspections wrong.

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