4.4 Testing and assessment

Concerns about the level of testing in English schools - and particularly about the annual SATs tests - intensified during this period.

The QCA urged schools to stop 'drilling' pupils for the tests. Chief executive Ken Boston warned that 'in many schools too much teaching time is taken up with practice tests and preparing for the key stage tests in English, mathematics and science, at the expense of actual teaching in these core subjects and other areas' .

Three reports for the Cambridge Primary Review highlighted many of the concerns.

One found that national tests at 7 and 11 left most children stressed and led to a 'pervasive anxiety' about their lives and the world they were growing up in. Professor Robin Alexander said 'these findings do build up to a sense that important changes are needed within the primary sector'.

Another noted that English children were among the youngest in the world to start formal learning and were the most tested throughout their education. It found that parents were increasingly seeking alternative forms of education such as home schooling or Steiner schools to free their children from the state sector's regime of testing and targets.

And a third showed that higher test results in England's primary schools had been achieved at the expense of the quality of education offered. Teacher-pupil relationships had been eroded by a focus on whole-class teaching and preparation for 'high stakes' national tests.

CSFC Report on Testing and Assessment

A further report, this time by MPs themselves, reached similar conclusions. The House of Commons Children, Schools and Families Select Committee report on Testing and Assessment, published in May 2008, warned the government that SATs tests had distorted the education of millions of children because schools focused on getting them through the tests rather than improving their knowledge and understanding. Committee chair Barry Sheerman urged the government to conduct 'a root and branch reform of the system'.

The report recommended:

• an inquiry to find the extent of the problem of schools 'teaching to the test';

• a reduction in the number of times children were tested;

• more use of internal teacher assessment;

• whole-cohort tests should be replaced with sample testing of a handful of pupils in each school; and

• the exams watchdog should conduct 'a full review of assessment standards' as ministers had failed to address concerns about grade inflation.

Although the government was adamant it would keep the tests in England (they had already been abolished in other parts of the UK), it did at least make some attempt to respond to the worries about them by trialling new 'lighter touch' tests. More than 400 schools took part in the two-year 'Making Good Progress' pilot project in which children were tested when their teachers felt they were ready rather than at the end of the key stage. Ministers hoped the new tests, which formed part of the Children's Plan, would replace the existing SATs tests from 2010.