Tories would scrap key stage 2 Sats

Shadow schools secretary Michael Gove outlined his plans to replace the controversial exams with national tests in the first year of secondary school instead.

He said replacing the tests - which were "increasingly discredited" - would allow an assessment system which better served the needs of children.

By switching them to when children went up to secondary school, the last year of primary education would be freed up for more broader teaching, he argued.

It would also allow a better assessment of how schools were performing in preparing children for their secondary education.

Mr Gove said: "We want to make sure we have a system of testing and assessment which actually serves the interests of children.

"Our principal aim is to ensure we have a system of testing which allows us to accurately measure how well individual children are actually doing and also to accurately measure how schools are doing and we are doing as a country," he said.

Mr Gove said having tests in the last year of primary school led to teachers "drilling" children just for the tests.

"What we believe we should do is move those tests to secondary school."

He denied moving the tests would mean parents would not be able to accurately gauge how well children were doing: "We would free the final year for teaching in the broadest sense in order to ensure that children had access to the most broad curriculum as possible.