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SATs at age of 14 axed after marking fiasco
Tim Ross, Education Correspondent14 Oct 2008
NATIONAL SATs for teenagers are to be scrapped in the wake of this summer's marking fiasco, the Evening Standard can reveal.
Schools Secretary Ed Balls has decided that the exams for 14-year-olds are to be abolished with immediate effect.
The tests for 11-year-olds at the end of primary school will stay but could be radically reformed by 2010. The minister's decision comes as some schools are still without results.
SATs grades for 1.2 million pupils across England were delayed after a string of blunders hit marking.
Some headteachers said they had "given up hope" of ever getting their results.
Mr Balls was due to make the announcement in a statement to Parliament today. Sources told the Standard the Key Stage 3 tests for 14-year-olds were no longer fulfilling their original purpose as an "accountability measure" to parents tracking pupils' progress.
Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, welcomed the decision to axe secondary school Sats and called for primary school tests to go as well.
Mr Brookes said schools faced "massive" difficulties with SATs this year. "Although statisticians will give you small percentages of tests that still have not been returned, for people involved it is massive," he said.
"If schools have invested the time, energy and anxiety to make sure this daft system works then the least they should expect is a valid response from it. Many schools, teachers and children have not had the privilege of that valid response."
For more than a decade, all 600,000 secondary school pupils aged 14 in England have had to take tests in maths, English and science.
The Government is to examine whether a nationally representative sample of pupils should still be tested at the age of 14 to measure educational standards and how this would work.
But for primary school children, there is no prospect of the tests being scrapped completely.
Mr Balls is determined that "externally marked tests" should remain the key way of measuring standards in primary schools, a source said.
The Government is running a pilot in hundreds of schools of a system in which pupils are tested when they are ready, rather than all together at the age of 11.
Officials said this pilot was working well at primary level. If the trial continues to be a success, the existing SATs could be replaced with the new arrangements from 2010.
A series of problems hit the marking of national SATs this year, delaying results for children across the country. Some markers never received scripts, computer problems disrupted an electronic results service and teachers lost confidence in the system.
An inquiry led by former chief schools inspector Lord Sutherland is under way and expected to report by Christmas.
The US-based company, ETS Europe, which was hired to run the tests, has dissolved its contract with the Government, losing £50 million.
No replacement contractor has been appointed to run next year's tests for 11-year-olds, which are due to take place in May.
