SATs for pupils at 7 axed after parents’ revolt

NATIONAL curriculum tests for seven-year-olds in England are being scrapped, the Government confirmed yesterday.

Instead, children will be assessed when they first enter primary school so their progress can be measured when they leave aged 11.

The axing of Year Two SATs follows campaigning by teaching unions and parent groups, who said children were being ‘over-tested and over-worked’.

Instead, the Department for Education said a new ‘teacher-mediated assessment’ in Reception Year – for pupils aged four and five – will start from 2020. And controversial Key Stage One tests will become noncompulsory three years later.

Pupils will also sit a new times tables test in Year Four – rather than Year Six as initially planned – from 2019-20.

Education Secretary Justine Greening said: ‘ These changes will free up teachers to educate and inspire young children while holding schools to account in a proportionate and effective way.’

Under the changes, Key Stage One tests in reading, writing, maths and science – known as SATs – will no longer be compulsory from 2023. The DfE said the new baseline assessment in Reception Year will offer a ‘better starting point to measure progress and the impact of schools’.

The current Early Years Foundation Stage profile – completed by teachers in the last term of Reception – will be kept but improved.

Schools will also no longer have to submit teacher assessments in reading and maths for 11-yearolds from 2018-19. Teachers will also have ‘greater scope’ to use their judgment when assessing pupils’ writing at the end of Key Stages One and Two.

Primary school SATS have long been controversial, with critics saying they put too much pressure on young children.

The Let Our Kids Be Kids campaign said the assessments were sapping ‘children’s happiness and joy of learning’ because schools were focusing too much on the tests. The move to scrap them was broadly welcomed yesterday, with the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) insisting the decision was ‘good for children and schools’.

Julie McCulloch, primary specialist at ASCL, said: ‘For the first time, schools will be given credit for a child’s progress through their whole time at primary school from the age of four to 11, instead of the current system which measures progress only from the age of seven.’

Nick Brook, of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the change ‘may well be met with trepidation by some but it is absolutely the right thing to do’.