Headteachers call for end of tests

Schools with the best and worst results can easily be identified with nothing more complicated than a "postcode directory", the National Association of Head Teachers said.

But ministers are "morbidly preoccupied" with results and rankings, according to a commission set up by the NAHT.

"The whole way that children are taught and assessed has been skewed," the commission's report said. Based on evidence from academics, politicians, authors and teachers, the inquiry demanded that external tests be replaced with teacher assessments.

"The present regime of key stage tests and 'league tables' is being seen increasingly as deeply damaging to the quality of education and therefore to the standards of achievement in our schools," the report said.

"The Government has quite rightly agreed that testing seven-year-olds formally should give way to teacher assessment.

"The next step needs to be for teacher assessment to replace formal testing at key stages two and three as well. This would bring England in line with other countries, as well as with the rest of the UK."

League tables should be abolished and national standards measured by testing a small sample of children, not every child in the country.

The report follows Government plans to overhaul the national testing regime. Instead of taking long, high-pressure tests aged 11 and 14, pupils will sit shorter tests in English and maths when they are ready under the proposal.

A spokesman for the Department for Children said: "Parents do not want to go back to a world where schools were closed institutions. National tests which are externally set and marked allow parents to see accurately how their school performs in comparison to other schools."