This report by EDSK has found that the current set of primary school tests is not producing fair and accurate judgements on either pupils or schools. The report calls on the government to move away from the reliance on one-off high-stakes assessments for pupils in England and replace them with shorter and more reliable online tests.
The report shows that the way in which government holds schools to account for their performance on national tests is distorting the results of the tests themselves. For example, the high-stakes accountability system puts enormous pressure on teachers and school leaders to spend weeks, if not months, preparing pupils for SATs in Year 6, which can also lead to other subjects such as art, music and science being squeezed out of the curriculum.
Meanwhile, giving Ofsted inspectors access to pupils’ scores on the ‘phonics check’ in Year 1 has altered the national results to the point where neither parents nor government ministers can rely on them to provide an accurate measure of pupils’ reading ability. The same problem is likely to undermine the results of the new Year 4 ‘multiplication check’ being introduced this academic year.
The report also finds that having five national tests for pupils throughout primary education creates a significant workload burden for teachers and leaders yet does not help them improve teaching and learning.
SATs at age 11 come too late to provide useful feedback to schools on how they could raise literacy and numeracy standards. In addition, the results from the new ‘reception baseline assessment’ introduced this autumn will only be used to judge schools six years later when a pupil completes their SATs rather than helping teachers understand pupils’ strengths and weaknesses as they learn and develop each year.