Primary Teacher UK

SATs mess up 2008

This year's Sats results have been delayed by a week following marking problems. Ed Balls wrote to the Chair of the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee, Barry Sheerman, to inform him that the National Assessment Agency (NAA) expects there to be some delays to the release of Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 national curriculum test results to schools. According to the NAA site, which includes a FAQ about the lateness of the results:

"The arrangements for marking the national curriculum tests this year have been different from previous years. There is a new marking contractor, ETS Europe, and a series of additional checks to give greater assurance of high quality marking.

The main causes of this delay are the lateness in the completion of the marking process and a series of technical issues. This is a serious failure by ETS Europe for which we apologise to schools, pupils and parents.

We understand that this delay will inconvenience many schools, and we share their frustration and disappointment. The National Assessment Agency will take every measure at its disposal to ensure that all results are delivered as quickly as possible. "

The BBC have a good "What went wrong" analysis for those that want the full details!

What does this mean to schools? Detailed results and end-of-year reports, annoyed children and parents and the question which I'm sure every teacher is ansking themselves - what was wrong with the way it was marked last year!

We, as I'm sure every school that's had the papers back, has gone through and added them up themselves and used the thresholds to work out the level!

SATs should not be stressful

Primary schools in England should not be inflicting stress on seven-year-olds by treating national tests like exams, the children's secretary has said. Ed Balls said SATs days should be like any other and that pupils should not be aware that they were being tested.

In May, a Commons committee said inappropriate testing of children at seven, 11 and 14 could be damaging. It is feared that drilling children for tests - with results in school "league tables" - narrows their education. Mr Balls told the New Statesman magazine:

"The best head teachers will ensure that no six or seven-year-old knows they are doing Sats. I promise you that is the case.  If you are telling pupils in Year 2 that they are doing Sats next week then that's the wrong thing to do. You should not be stressing the children."

He said the tests did not need to be done in a "sit-down" environment, but could be carried out as part of the school day.

Why not just remove them all together?

Have you had your SATs back.  I know a number of schools that still haven't!  I advise you to check your stock room though - they are returned this year in a plain brown box that looks like every other box that comes into school on a daily basis!

Lib Dem's to scrap tests

From the Guardian: The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, pledged to scrap national Sats tests and called for a shorter school curriculum in a speech attacking the government's "one-size-fits-all" approach to education.

In a speech at the CentreForum thinktank, Clegg said that the money saved from scrapping key stage tests for seven- and 14-year-olds would be ploughed into early assessment at age five and a huge expansion of one-to-one reading and numeracy tuition. The party would introduce a much shorter curriculum and allow all schools the curriculum freedoms currently enjoyed by academies. Clegg said,

"By scaling back some of the excessive national testing ... we will save millions of pounds. And the money can be put directly into improving basic skills for those who presently fall behind from day one, and never catch up. "My intention is to use testing to target support - not merely to target criticism.

One-to-one tuition for five-, six- and seven-year-olds has been shown to have huge benefits."

An independent "education standards authority" would tackle accusations of dumbing down by ensuring exam standards. It would incorporate Ofsted and commission research on good educational practices and give advice to schools. The DCSF would be halved in size and focus only on setting the broad strategic goals of the education system and the legal frameworks.

"Ministers would have to stop sending their regular diet of directives and diktats to schools. In fact I'd ban them from doing it - with an education freedom act."

Targets would be changed to make schools address the needs of all pupils, not just those on the border between key grades.

Sounds like sense to me...

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Trouble with the SATS (again!)

Schools and markers say there are problems with this year's Sats according to the BBC. Some schools could not access the registration system (including us) they needed to complete so that markers know which pupils' work they should have.

Markers' complaints include a lack of organisation and communication by the company running England's school tests this year for the first time, ETS. The National Assessment Agency (NAA) says it is confident all will go well. ETS (Educational Testing Service) is a US-based non-profit organisation with extensive test administration experience in some 180 countries.

It was awarded a five-year £156m contract by the NAA a year ago. This covers the tests that all of England's 11 and 14-year-olds are taking and the Year 7 progress tests. Here are some of the problems faced, as posted on the TES website:

* When contracts for the work were sent out by ETS, some markers were told they had been chosen on the basis of their previous year's performance - even though this was the first time they had done it.

* Others were sent a contract for the wrong subject - or more than one contract.

* Sometimes efforts to contact ETS by phone or e-mail went unanswered.

* In some cases people's references were taken up after contracts had been sent out.

* One marker received a request for a reference about her - sent to herself at her home address.

* There was confusion over training venues, complaints about the training itself and the late dates at which everything was being done.

Problems seem to have been compounded by a new procedure this year intended to tighten up the selection of suitable markers. They had to pass an online "standardisation" assessment of their marking consistency. They were given two attempts to pass this or face being struck off as a marker. But those who attempted it last weekend were initially all told they had failed - even if they had not.

The NAA said this had affected only some 200 out of some 5,000 markers and they would all be contacted to explain the situation, with those who had indeed failed at the first attempt being given a second chance as planned.

Markers to be marked

At last - this is something that has been needed for a long time, especially after the poor Literacy marking last year. Taken from the Guardian:

"People marking the national tests pupils sit at age 11 and 14 will be required to pass exams themselves to do so, under new plans to improve the quality of marking announced by the government's exams watchdog today.

The moves are intended to allay growing fears over marking standards. Last month, the Guardian revealed that schools had requested re-marks for more than 100,000 key stage 3 English test papers for 14-year-old pupils over the past three years.

In 2007, schools asked for a second opinion on the marks for 25,549 English test papers.

This year, markers will have to take an online "standardisation exercise" to make sure that they put into practice what they have been taught during their training. Only those markers who pass the exam will be allocated test scripts to mark.

The process of marking will also be monitored more carefully. Previously, the standard of a marker's work was checked twice during the marking period, in 2008 this will be increased to up to five marking checks."

SATs being used "inappropriately" to draw up league tables

Jim Knight, yesterday dismissed fears that teachers drill children to pass tests, but he acknowledged they are required to focus on core subjects. In a robust defence of the government's assessment regime, Knight told MPs on the Commons children, schools and families select committee that pupils were not over-tested. He defended league tables, saying failure to publish data would lead to accusations that the government was trying to hide the figures.

"I don't have a problem with pupils being taught the things they need to pass the tests even if that means a change in priority. In general terms we're pretty clear about our priorities in testing. We want people to focus on maths, English and science and we want people to teach to those priorities. Vast swathes of people use the tests appropriately.

In order to help them where they're not we're investing £150m over the next three years on assessment for learning to improve the way tests are used. Assessment, including tests, always has and always will be part of teaching... I don't buy that it's too stressful. I don't get the argument. I visit enough schools to see where the tests are used well to drive forward understanding and learning."

Knight refuted claims by the committee chairman, Barry Sheerman, that the national curriculum key stage tests - or Sats - were being used "inappropriately" to draw up league tables.

The government is yet to announce how the financial incentives built into the Making Good Progress pilot will work. Knight said he would give more details "shortly" but his inclination was to reward schools for helping those not making "the sort of pace of progress that you want" to improve rather than "just paying for those who you'd normally expect to do well".

"It's worth bearing in mind the new system will celebrate as much someone moving from level 0 to 2 and 1 to 3 as 5 to 7 and that's an improvement," he told the committee.

If the pilot works well, the government may "evolve the Sats one step further, but it doesn't mean we want to retreat from tests", he said.

When pressed on whether the pilot tests would replace Sats, he said only if they proved a positive step forward.

Electronic School Reports

The traditional school report is to be replaced by an electronic version delivered by e-mail, Schools Minister Jim Knight is set to announce. Parents are to be promised much more up-to-date information about their children's progress, on the desktop.

This will include "real-time reporting" on pupils' work and behaviour in all secondary schools in England by 2010. We, in Primary schools, will be expected to provide a similar service for parents by 2012.

The online reports would give parents access to "frequently-updated information on children's achievement, progress, attendance, behaviour and special needs wherever, whenever they want, using password-protected, secure, online systems".

Mr Knight says using the internet and mobile phones will help build links with "hard to reach" parents and will "deepen the school-parent relations". There will also be efforts to make sure that children from more deprived backgrounds do not lose out because of a lack of computer equipment at home, with a pilot scheme examining ways of reducing this "digital divide".

Unions however have warned that this will mean more work for teachers.

Cheating in the SATs

The pressure of national tests was blamed for driving schools to cheat after a string of primaries were stripped of their results. Five schools in England were found to have broken the rules in the SATs.

Four saw their results wiped out in all three subjects, English, maths and science. A fifth school was stripped of its English results. The controversy followed warnings from academics, charities and teachers that the national tests dominate primary education. Schools are under enormous pressure to help meet government goals for 85 per cent of pupils to reach the required standard in English and maths. The league tables published today show ministers are almost certain to miss the goals which were set as targets for 2006 and still have not been met. Results for a whole group of children can be annulled if it is found that a teacher discovered what questions would be asked in the tests and tried to coach pupils beforehand. Results can also be annulled if it is found a teacher "over-aided" pupils during the test or made "changes to pupils' scripts after the tests".

The National Association of Head Teachers said the pressure on schools could lead to cheating as a small number of teachers felt they could not risk failure by being honest. It said incidents involving malpractice showed "we need an assessment system that promotes professional integrity and this one does not".

One third of SATs results could be wrong

According to a report published on Friday as many as one in three primary school children is given the wrong marks in the SATs.  The reports document research showing that up to one in three pupils is given the wrong mark at the end of the tests. Short papers with questions that have a narrow range of possible answers mean that pupils' skills are not rigorously tested, leaving a wide margin of error.

"It is estimated that for the end of key stage tests in England this means that as many as one third of pupils may be given the wrong 'level'. Only an increase in length of test beyond anything that is practicable would materially change this situation. Thus there are limits to how accurate the results of tests can be."

It claims that the use of SATs to measure progress year to year is fundamentally flawed. The rapid rise from 1995 to 2000, often cited as evidence that the tests work, was a reflection of schools getting better at teaching pupils to take tests.

Look at this example if you want proof at how bad SATs marking system is!