Nick Collins Telegraph
02 Aug 2010

Children and parents have been left in confusion after the government published the results of sats tests and teacher assessments together for the first time Photo: GETTY Pupils who sat this year’s exams face being awarded different marks in the same subject if teachers’ appraisals do not match their test scores. Sats were designed to give parents an indication of the academic standard their child has reached and to help schools stream pupils into the correct classes. Teachers now assess each pupil’s performance over the year and grade them based on their overall ability. But confusion arose after Ed Balls, the education secretary at the time, decided last November to publish the two sets of national figures side by side. The move was designed to placate unions which had threatened to boycott the exams after teachers claimed they were forced to drop subjects including art, history, geography and PE in the final year of primary school and drill pupils to pass the tests.
A quarter of England’s 15,000 primaries refused to stage the exams in May, meaning pupils at around 4,000 schools will be judged on their teachers’ assessments alone. There were calls last night for the Government to publish one set of results. Prof Alan Smithers, from the University of Buckingham, said: “Publishing the two sets of results together is confusing. If you are getting contradictory results that is a problem. But it is also information overload and what we need is good, simple, reliable information.” Sats for 14 year-olds were scrapped along with the science exam for 11 year-olds after teachers complained they had to teach to the test, leaving gaps in the curriculum. Many secondary schools retest pupils in their first few weeks because they do not view Sats results as an accurate measure of ability. Parents also called for the exams to be abolished, arguing that they were an unreliable measure of children’s ability.

Margaret Morrissey, the founder of Parents Outloud, a campaign group, said: “Sats really should not exist. Most children do not perform that well under pressure.
“It is a big possibility that they may get two different marks, and parents will be even more confused by this system than before.”

Sats tests were introduced for 11 year-olds in 1995. Teachers have been asked to assess their pupils individually since 1996, with these unofficial results released to parents alongside the test score. Unions warned last night that pupils might receive worse marks from teachers than in their exams because they were unable to fulfil their potential in a curriculum geared towards the test. One in five pupils could be given the wrong grade in Sats papers due to inconsistent marking, the exam watchdog Ofqual warned last month.