Girls continue to outperform boys in all subjects by the end of primary school in England, according to the latest key stage 2 test results published by the Department for Education (DfE). The results, from the national curriculum tests and assessments taken by pupils in year six, known as Sats, showed 70% of girls reached…
Category: Sats
The Guardian view on testing four-year-olds: wrong again | Editorial
Accountability in education is important. Politicians, acting on the public’s behalf, are right to seek evidence that schools are delivering a good service. So there is nothing wrong, in principle, with gathering information in order to track progress. The problem with the government’s new baseline assessment of four-year-olds – being trialled over the next six…
Teachers assessing pupils could replace formal exams, study says
Assessments by teachers of pupils’ abilities could replace traditional tests and exams such as Sats and GCSEs to reduce costs and “bring joy back to the classroom”, according to new research. In a paper published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, researchers found teacher assessments accurately reflected the ability of their pupils’ performance…
If ministers really want to trust teachers it’s time to ditch the number fairies | Michael Rosen
Do you think it is now possible to produce statistics on schools that not only ignore what teachers, headteachers and parents have to say about the children, but don’t even have to be attached to real pupils? Can there be fictive figures, floating above a school like number fairies? I had this thought at a…
Year 6 pupils spend Easter at school cramming for Sats
Children at hundreds of primary schools in England are being asked to attend Sats revision classes over the Easter holidays, a teaching union official has revealed, warning that it was part of a disturbing trend. Darren Northcott, the NASUWT national officer for education, said revision classes for primary school pupils were unheard of five years…
Primary teachers to be balloted on boycotting Sats
Primary schoolteachers are to be balloted on whether to boycott Sats next year because of concerns that high-stakes testing is harming children’s mental health. Delegates at the National Education Union (NEU) annual conference in Liverpool voted in favour of the action after a heated debate, seeing off an amendment from the executive which had argued…