Ed Balls defies Tory calls to quit over SATs fiasco

Ed Balls has suffered a Commons mauling over claims that 'teenagers and cocktail waitresses' had been hired in a desperate attempt to meet SATs marking deadlines.

The Children's Secretary repeatedly refused calls to resign over the marking debacle  -  but the chaos has deepened as it emerged that some test papers have gone missing.

A Dorset primary school head said a tests helpline told him his English papers might have been 'mislaid'.

The spectacle of lost scripts is the latest in a string of mishaps to hit this year's national tests taken by 1.2million pupils aged 11 and 14.

Thousands of primary and secondary schools have yet to receive a full set of results even though term has already ended for many.

In the Commons yesterday Mr Balls was challenged over the 'shambolic' marking and repeatedly forced to refuse calls to quit, apologise or intervene in the fiasco.

After giving an initial Commons statement, Mr Balls bowed to pressure from the Tories to face MPs for a grilling on the SATs crisis.

Tory schools spokesman Michael Gove said the 'terrible fiasco' had 'blighted' the summer holidays for many 11 and 14-year-olds because their results were not delivered by the July 8 deadline.

He went on to attack 'chronic delays' in the marking of papers after the Government's exams quango handed the contract to run the system to U.S. testing firm ETS.

'The marking itself has been flawed, with reports of teenagers and cocktail waitresses being approached to help meet deadlines and papers of widely different quality being given the same mark,' said Mr Gove.

He added that Mr Balls's claim the marking was 'no worse than every year' underlined the 'incompetence at the heart of this Government' on education.

The accusation that waitresses were hired to help this year followed the revelation that ETS had virtually taken over the Hilton hotel in Manchester for an emergency marking centre.

Laura Wallace, 21, told how she was recruited by ETS within minutes of attending
an interview at the Hilton for a job as a cocktail waitress. She is thought to have worked inputting marks data.

Meanwhile, Barry Sheerman, Labour chairman of the Commons schools select committee, claimed students who had just passed A-levels had also been hired.

Mr Balls denied teenagers or cocktail waitresses were used to mark scripts.

However, Tory MP for Rayleigh, Mark Francois, told Mr Balls: 'This is a complete fiasco, it happened on your watch and ultimately the buck rests with you and no one else.'

Mr Balls said he was 'accountable' but the responsibility for delivering the tests lay with ETS.

He insisted he had been given legal advice that 'ministerial intervention or interference at this stage in a contractual discussion would be the wrong thing to do'.

This prompted another Tory, Peter Bone (Wellingborough), to tell Mr Balls: 'You said you are accountable. If you are accountable, why haven't you resigned?'

In an update on marking progress, Mr Balls said the results of 98 per cent of exams taken by 11-year-olds had now been released.

However, an estimated 20 per cent of primary schools are still without full sets of results in English, maths and science. Almost a quarter of English tests for 14-year-olds are still awaited.

Stephen Mason, head of St Augustine's primary in Weymouth, Dorset, revealed that he had been chasing his English results since the first lapsed deadline and rang a helpline yesterday to ask if they had been lost.

He was told by ETS that the papers were not lost but may have been 'mislaid'. In a letter to parents and pupils, Mr Mason spoke of his 'extreme disappointment'.