SATS - the whole process has been unSATisfactory!

Written by David Heath MP and published in Western Gazette on Thu 24th Jul 2008

Parliament broke up on Tuesday for the long - over-long in my view - summer recess, but there was time for just one more major row before we left, this time on the subject of the Key Stage 2 Standard Assessment Tests, or SATS as they are known, which this year have descended into farce as a result of the contract to mark the tests having been given to an American company, ETS. It would appear that either ETS hugely under-estimated the task of marking the exam papers of a whole cohort of eleven and fourteen year olds, or else it has been monumentally incompetent. Possibly both.

I first sounded alarm bells on this in early May, when an experienced marker who is a constituent told me that she was having great difficulty getting through on-line to get accreditation, and was at the point of giving up. Questions were asked in the House, but nothing much seems to have happened. Ministers say that they were assured that everything was OK, by the company, of course, but also by the QCA, the so-called Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. One thing you will notice about this story is the proliferation of acronyms, something educationalists seem to have to live with.

But what was quite clear very soon is that everything was far from OK. The help-line, that bane of the modern age, proved useless, and many experienced examiners were cut out of the system. Many others found themselves snowed under with an avalanche of unmarked papers. And as the clamour from schools increased and deadlines came and went, so the company found themselves resorting to using under-qualified markers, or so it is reported. A-level students and cocktail waitresses have been mentioned in the popular press, although in the latter case I can see no problem provided she is an educated and qualified cocktail waitress - the fear is that they may not have been!. And still many of the results have not come back to schools.

The problem, however, apparently does not stop there. The headteacher of one of our local primary schools has sent me a copy of the letter she has written to the National Assessment Agency, the NAA (another acronym you needn't worry about), which expresses in the strongest possible terms her concerns, which I suspect are shared by many schools. Her school has not yet received back any results for science, which is disgraceful in itself. But she says the errors in marking in the English and Maths papers she has received back are totally unacceptable. Marks are not an accurate reflection of the standards of the children's work. In view of the inconsistencies, she suggests that the whole group's writing needs to be re-marked.

There is supposed to be an appeal process. This particular school was told that they should send back ten scripts as a sample to be reviewed. But, as the headteacher points out, that means teachers on the last couple of days of term taking time out to analyse and select scripts for review, which is hardly fair to correct the mistakes of others. And there is a cost, of £6.50 for each review, which in a primary school rapidly adds up. Is that fair, a point made by my colleague David Laws, the MP for Yeovil, who yet again showed the excellent grip he has on these matters as shadow minister.

But the real cost is to the child. This is supposed to be a system which assesses a child's progress and allows for proper planning of future work. Imagine how demoralising it must be for a child, and indeed his or her family and teachers, who has consistently performed at or above the required standards but is then marked down at testing because of a gross failure of the system. What effect will it have on their future, particularly at the transition to secondary school. And, in a world apparently run by league tables, it does little for the reputation of the school either.

I raised some of these issues in questioning Ed Balls, the Secretary of State, on Tuesday. I have problems in any case with the over-elaborate and over-sold testing regime. But in the circumstances of this fiasco, with real doubts as to the effectiveness of the marking, surely action is needed beyond a mumbled expression of regret. If the inaccuracies of marking demonstrated in one primary school in Somerset are replicated across the country, and there is already evidence that is the case, then surely the whole SATS tests for this year should be declared null and void, ETS should be summarily shown the door, a better system introduced for next year, and for this, we should rely on the experience and expertise of teachers and their knowledge of the children they teach to assess their capabilities and their potential in the old-fashioned way. That would also show we actually have confidence in teachers to do their job in the process.

It won't happen, of course. I can only advise everyone to treat the outcomes of this year's testing with even more caution than usual. No, I'd go further than that. Trust your children, and the teachers, not the tests.

Meanwhile, with Parliament in recess, I'm going to spend the next couple of weeks doing my annual tour of around a hundred villages up and down my constituency. I'm looking forward to meeting people and hearing about local issues that perhaps I've missed. If you see me in your village, please do come and say hello. That's what I'm there for!