Teachers slam comma chaos in SATs marking
ANGRY teachers claim pupils have been unfairly penalised in primary school tests for the size and shape of semi-colons and commas.
Staff urged all schools to go through their pupils’ papers to check for errors in the marking of this year’s tests, known as SATs, for 10 and 11-year-olds.
One question asked pupils to put a semi-colon into the sentence: “Come and see me tomorrow I will not have time to see you today.”
Many pupils appeared to have got it correct, placing the semicolon between “tomorrow” and “I”, but scored zero while others got a tick for the same answer.
Teachers, using the hashtag #SATsshambles on Twitter, alleged kids were marked down because commas were not curved the right way or semi-colons were too large.
Russell Hobby, of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: “We now operate within a testing culture which appears focused on catching young children out rather than recording their achievements.”
The Department for Education insisted results were “accurate”.
Pearson, the firm that ran the SATs, said: “Marking is monitored but there is a review process.”