Creative boycott

Following my posting on the test boycott, I have received the following interesting email from an East London primary schoolteacher explaining the approach of one school to the boycott:

You might be interested to hear how the SATs 'boycott' is being interpreted in our school. I wonder how many other schools are following a similar approach? Our Year 6 will be sitting SATs tests under full exam conditions. But they will be the 2009 tests, not this year's' The raw results won't be reported to the borough, but they will be used - informed and modified, where appropriate, by teacher assessment - to give parents an overall level which the school thinks the child has reached at the end of primary school. If the borough asks, I imagine the same overall level will be reported to them. I think this is a sensible response to the situation we find ourselves in. I for one don't have a problem with SATs. The powers that be at my school have a similar view. The classroom reality is that we've been building the kids up towards the exams all year, and we can't tell them now: 'Sorry, all that work's been wasted. We won't be doing SATs.' Colleagues say 'It's the league tables we object to.' I happen to think that SATs should continue - though my experience, with children now beginning secondary school, is that secondary schools largely discount them. From a professional point of view, I think teachers are in severe danger of landing themselves with something far, far worse, in terms of workload, if APP is to become the alternative.

Why a testing boycott would hurt poorer pupils most

I have a column in today's Independent arguing that the unions' wish to scrap testing would damage poorer pupils most.

Last week the National Union of Teachers and the National Association of Head Teachers started to ballot their members on a planned boycott of this year's national English and Maths Key Stage 2 tests for 11-year-olds. At the same time, the National Equality Panel laid bare the extent of economic and educational inequality that still exists in Britain today.

The NUT and NAHT argue that the tests impose an excessive workload on their members, and force teachers to drill pupils in English and Maths when they could be doing other things. Yet the independent expert group on assessment, comprising five
experienced education figures, found these tests to be "educationally beneficial" and pointed out that the best way to prepare for Key Stage 2 tests is "through a varied programme of high-quality teaching throughout the year, not through repeatedly sitting practice test papers".

Aside from the revelation in the equality panel's report that there is still a 26 percentage point gap between the achievements of poorer children and their better-off peers at the age of 11, it is clear that the planned boycott by the two unions is wrong-headed. National test data allows teachers to compare the results of different schools, and of schools in similar circumstances, helping to drive faster improvements in poorer areas such as east London. It is crucial to revealing hidden weaknesses so that they can be properly addressed.

But the achievement gap that remains – and the fact that one in four pupils fails to reach the expected standard in both subjects – shows why it is so important to retain the accountability and openness that has helped to drive improvement in so many schools. If testing is abandoned we will lose such vital information in the future. Yet both major parties have been trying to appease the unions with proposals that – despite their protestations to the contrary – could see the demise of this key indicator of primary school performance.

Ed Balls, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, said before Christmas that he was "not closing the door" on scrapping the tests at 11 in 2012, if Labour is re-elected, provided he was confident that teacher assessments could provide a reasonable alternative. And his Conservative shadow had earlier proposed moving the tests from the end of primary school to the start of secondary school, with secondary teachers doing the marking, and those marks used to create primary performance tables. Both proposals would reduce independent scrutiny. Teachers already do plenty of their own assessments, but theirs is not an independent judgement. If the results are published and become the main indicator of primary school success, the incentives for cheating will be greater.

The Tories' ideas are equally problematic. Secondary teachers have a different vested interest. They are judged in part on the progress they make with each pupil from the start of school to their GCSEs. If they mark pupils down in Year 7 it will look as if they have made greater progress by Year 11. And the moment such results are used in primary league tables, there will be justifiable uproar in primary schools.

Despite suggestions to the contrary, parents strongly support the tests. An Ipsos Mori poll for the Government in 2008 showed that 75 per cent of parents think information on the performance of primary schools should be made public, and 70 per cent of parents place value on the tests in providing information about how their child's school is performing. The unions say that teachers can be trusted to perform the assessments honestly. And while most teachers undoubtedly can be, the unions hardly inspire confidence when they counter scientific and representative polls with unscientific self-selecting ballots of parents collected by their members. At a time when we are regretting allowing self-policing by MPs of their expenses and the lack of regulation for financiers, it would be extraordinary to contemplate removing the most important piece of independent scrutiny that we have in our primary schools.

Despite their flaws, tests remain our best way of providing independent information to parents and taxpayers about how individual schools are doing and giving teachers
comparative data that they can use to improve. Instead of dreaming up alternatives, politicians should be vigorously defending the tests. Abandoning them will limit the chances of many of our poorer pupils getting the education they deserve. They will be the real losers.

Don't lose a primary focus on the basics

I have a column in today's Independent, reiterating the case for testing after last week's disappointing Key Stage 2 results. You can read it here. Here's an extract

The most important feature of the years between 1995 and 2000, when results rose rapidly, was single-minded momentum. Schools were in no doubt that their top priority was the 3Rs. That momentum disappeared as ministers merged the literacy and numeracy strategies into a catch-all primary strategy, and began to give equal emphasis to welfare issues. Of course, primary schools should offer a broad curriculum and care for their pupils' welfare. And they should ensure that pupils who can read get access to plenty of good books.

But the focus of government needs to be clear. After all, those pupils who don't reach level 4 are unlikely to gain five good GCSEs. And without them, they will find it much harder to get a good job or progress to university...... let's not lose sight of why testing and accountability were introduced – too many primary schools assumed that children would acquire the 3Rs through osmosis or their parents. The losers in this lottery were poorer pupils without supportive or fluent parents.

And, given the evidence that rigorous phonics, a sound grasp of grammar and punctuation, and a facility with mental arithmetic are essential building blocks for the 3Rs, governments should not shy away from expecting schools to deliver them. But if government wants schools to do better, it must avoid mixed messages.

Ministers made a big error allowing the abandonment of Labour's literacy and numeracy strategies to be seen as an admission of their failure. And the Tories played a foolish game when they suggested that the Key Stage 2 tests could be replaced by teacher-marked tests in secondary school (they have since indicated that external marking is more likely).

The main reason there has been so little recent progress has been that – with the exception of a renewed focus on phonics – there has been too much muddle over what matters in primary schools. The latest thematic review of the curriculum is in danger of adding to the confusion. But the strategies should not be revived: schools must be held accountable instead for the extent to which they successfully teach the 3Rs, and encouraged to use the best of the available commercial teaching programmes. Ofsted inspections should ensure that children are taught the basics properly, and show how some schools succeed against the odds.

Yet, in the end, the only way that we can know whether individual primary schools are doing their job is through independently set and marked tests. To imagine that our children would be better taught without them is to ignore the lessons of history.

A good idea from the assessment experts on transition

The expert group on assessment has plenty of sensible recommendations in their report, including on the importance of keeping English and Maths tests at 11. But one that may get overlooked amidst the understandable focus on testing is their idea that schools should do an extended study which pupils would start at primary school and complete in secondary school. Transition is a difficult time for many pupils, and they often fall back after starting in the more impersonal secondary school environment. This study would not only provide a bridge between the two; it would also provide opportunities for the broader education that the unions complain is being lost by the tests. The idea has already been tried in some London schools, and should be tried more widely.

The NAHT 'poll' that shows why we need independent testing in primary schools

I listened to NAHT general secretary Mick Brookes telling us this morning that we could trust his members to do their own assessments of how good their own schools were, without any need for troublesome tests or pesky performance tables.

In the midst of the discussion, Mr Brookes informed us that his stance enjoyed the overwhelming backing of parents, according to an opinion poll that his union had done. Given that an independent Ipsos MORI survey for the DCSF showed a rather different result - and it was conducted using a representative sample of parents by a reputable polling company - I thought this a bit fishy.

So I checked the NAHT's website for more details of this 'poll.' In fact, there is no independent opinion poll. Instead, the NAHT has pulled together a self-selecting 'sample' of parents' views collected by NAHT members and collated with no attempt at weighting.

The press release issued in February even suggests that embarrassed NAHT press officers know the whole thing is a crock. "Whilst we recognise that this is not an independent survey, it represents a substantial body of opinion," they plead.

So, let's get this straight. The union which tells us that we can trust its members to tell parents exactly how well their child's school is doing in English and maths without independent national tests or published results is quite happy to defy the rules of statistics to get the data it wants, and to pretend that its data is of some value even though it shows results exactly the opposite of properly conducted independent research.

And we are supposed then to take their word that we don't need any independent look at how primary schools run by its members are performing?

Boycotting tests would be a slap in the face to taxpayers and parents

The fairly predictable decision of the National Association of Head Teachers to ballot its membership on a boycott of national tests for eleven year-olds is nothing to do with the absurd notion that a single set of externally marked and set tests in the first fifteen years of a young person's life is 'damaging' and everything to do with the view of some professionals that it is impertinent of parents and taxpayers to wish to have a degree of accountability that is independent of individual schools. After all, it is up to individual NAHT members to decide how much they want to 'pressure' their pupils, and to pretend this is all the fault of the tests is not only disingenuous but is disproved by the many successful schools that manage to get the balance right.

The issue here is not whether the existing tests might be improved; they can. The Government is already reviewing them, and it is likely that the conclusion will be more tightly focused English and Maths tests. There is also merit in doing much of the testing online. Rather it is the growing view that professionals should be accountable to nobody but themselves, despite the fact that the taxpayer foots the bill (the Tories have already swallowed this view in their plans to leave doctors free of any patient-focused targets).

Having seen what happens with excessively light-touch regulation in the private sector, it is extraordinary that public servants should demand the same for themselves. Politicians of all parties should make clear that anybody boycotting the tests is in breach of their legal obligations and their duty to parents; they should do so quickly and without equivocation, and explain the consequences. Otherwise, all the gains in openness in our schools system over the last two decades will be endangered, and parents will once more find themselves excluded from a secret garden in which their enquiries are unwelcome and there is no external check on the assessments being made by teachers about their child's progress before GCSEs.

Parents back tests - ministers need to do so more clearly too

One of the arguments made by the two teaching unions threatening to boycott national tests next year is that they have the backing of parents.

Well, they may have on the sort of self-selecting surveys that teaching unions seem to specialise in. David Aaronovitch did a good job exposing the latest ATL survey proclaiming the death of school discipline to the sort of basic scrutiny that seems to have eluded most newspapers.

And when the DCSF conducted a proper opinion poll - using Ipsos MORI and based on a scientific sample - it found a rather different picture when it comes to what parents think of tests.

• 75% of parents think information on the performance of primary schools should be available to the general public;
• 70% of parents place value on the tests in providing information about how their child’s school is performing;
• 78% of parents with children who have done the tests think they are an accurate reflection of how their child is doing;
• 69% of parents think test results are useful for teachers when their child progresses to secondary school

Even when given the chance to say whether the tests should stay as they were or be replaced, 44% of parents said tests should stay as they are, with 36% of parents wanting them replaced, with most of the latter group wanting testing to stay. As the DCSF press notice pointed out, this means that 55% of parents expressing a preference think tests should stay at they are.

Despite last year's fiasco, tests still retain majority parental support. So Ed Balls should be wary of sending mixed messages to the teaching unions at their annual whingefests. The main headline on the DCSF press release showing A MAJORITY OF PARENTS BACK TESTS was not that; instead it was KEY STAGE 2 TESTS NOT SET IN STONE, ED BALLS TELLS TEACHERS' UNION CONFERENCE with the survey results given second billing.

The truth is that the Government is looking at a more complex alternative to the current tests, which would see most pupils taking more than one test in each subject in their last two years of primary school, and wants to publish the results on a new report card. Which is fine if they can find a straightforward way to present the results, whilst getting the marking right, crediting high achievers and avoiding the low expectations which CVA value added tables have fostered.

Balls was right yesterday to make clear that some form of national testing would remain and to condemn the threatened boycott. But we need to hear much stronger and clearer support for national testing and published results from ministers, more often. The parents they polled have shown them the way.

How to reform tests

I have a piece in the latest edition of The House Magazine, continuing my arguments in favour of a reformed testing system in schools. Here's an extract:

Testing has – with regular inspections and pupil-level targets – been part of a cultural shift in schools that has brought real improvements. But it is not just through greater accountability that testing has helped improvement. The data from tests – combined with the power of computers – has given teachers access to data that they can use to ensure that they get the most out of individual pupils. By seeing what the best students in similar circumstances can achieve, they can lift expectations in their own classroom.

There are still ways to simplify the tests whilst keeping the level of independent scrutiny that they provide for every primary school. First, teachers could still be encouraged to enter pupils for tests when they are ready. Pupils should not be prevented from scoring higher-than-average grades on the papers, but many might be tested at age 10 rather than 11. In schools that devote months to the preparation for tests to the exclusion of other subjects – and those that do are rarely the best schools – this should allow a better curriculum mix.

Second, marking pressure could be reduced by confining external marking to English and Maths, leaving Science to internal assessment. Those are clearly the most important subjects for any child if they are to access the rest of the curriculum. Third, there may be a place for multiple choice questions in Grammar, Spelling and Mathematics, which can be marked by computer, though there must still be a place for independently marked writing tests.

Whatever happens, we cannot afford to abandon the level of independent scrutiny that testing provides for primary schools. Without it, we will fail future generations of children.

Let's not go back to 70s primary education

Despite the Today programme's insistence on the term, "independent" is certainly not an apt description of today's report from the self-styled 'largest' review of primary education in 40 years. It is another deeply ideological strike against standards and effective teaching of the 3Rs in our primary schools.

Many of its contributors oppose the very idea of school 'standards' and have an ideological opposition to external testing. They have been permanent critics of the changes of recent decades. And it is only in that light that the review's conclusions can be understood.

Of course, there is no conflict between teaching literacy and numeracy, and the other subjects within the primary curriculum. And the best schools do indeed show how doing them all well provides a good and rounded education. Presenting this as the point of difference is a diversionary Aunt Sally.

However, there is a very real conflict between recognising the need to single literacy and numeracy out for extra time over the other subjects as with the dedicated literacy and numeracy lessons, and making them just another aspect of primary schooling that pupils may or may not pick up along the way.

For far too long, after the Plowden review and a move towards so-called 'progressive' teaching, children were not being taught to read and write properly. Schools too often expected children to pick up reading by looking at books rather than being taught phonetically. Grammar and tables were often not taught, as they were seen as elitist.

The literacy hour started to undo this damage, and Jim Rose's excellent report on phonics pointed the way forward for the future. Part of the 'prescription' of the literacy hour included an expectation that children learn to spell and express themselves correctly. Good teachers pointed the way to synthetic phonics, not government diktat. Equally, many primary teachers lacked confidence in teaching basic arithmetic before the daily numeracy lessons.

But some university schools of education remained wedded to the old ways and were reluctant to accept these changes. After all, they had often failed to teach teachers properly how to teach these subjects. A return to a situation where the teaching of these basics is subsumed again into a process of osmosis would destroy another generation of primary schoolchildren in the same way that the children of the seventies were failed.

Of course, we need to get the balance right, and I argued last week that we can do so with primary testing, but the Primary Review is not about getting the balance right; it is about reversing the changes of the last twenty years and returning our schools to a time when there was no public accountability and the basics were largely subsumed into other lessons.

Ministers and their Tory shadows need to start saying so, and doing so loudly.

This post has been picked up by the Reading Reform Foundation.

Keep primary school tests

I have a piece in today's Independent arguing in favour of keeping externally set primary school tests. You can read it here. Here's an extract:

Some teachers' leaders regard the abolition of Key Stage 3 as a stepping stone to the abolition of the primary school tests. But the abolition of externally marked* Key Stage 1 tests for seven-year-olds in 2005 has already seen results dip, as the limited pressure on schools that went with those tests has eased. The scrapping of the more important Key Stage 2 tests could lead to a bigger decline.

Moreover, accountability has contributed to real improvements. The proportion of 11-year-olds reaching the expected standard at Key Stage 2 has risen from 49 per cent in English and 45 per cent in maths in 1995 to 81 and 78 per cent last year. That improvement – which has been even faster in many inner-city schools as a result of minimum standards through floor targets – has coincided with national tests, Ofsted inspections and the publication of school-level results.

Just as important, their publication has given teachers invaluable data that they can use to ensure that they are getting the most out of their pupils. So it is good that the Government has said that it remains committed to externally set and marked tests at Key Stage 2. Indeed, they are likely to be a key part of the new report card......

Whatever happens, the problems with the 2008 tests – and any consequent difficulties with the 2009 tests – cannot be the excuse for their complete demise. By all means change the tests and reduce the marking burden, but let's not abandon accountability.

*QCA press office point out that before this change, teachers marked the tests but did so based on an external marking scheme, whereas now they can use their own judgements about which level a pupil is at. However, the point remains that they are now based much more on internal rather than arguably more objective external judgments.

A mixture of sentimentality and panic?

What would be a good way of describing a report on children which reckoned that kids today were worse off than in the days when they were 'seen and not heard', or when child labour was rife; one that sought to insulate youngsters from the world into which they were likely to become adults by not testing them or publishing the results?

The Archbishop of Canterbury, in a foreword to today's report from the Children's Society, puts it well: "a climate where the mixture of sentimentalism and panic makes discussion of children's issues so difficult." But he wasn't talking about this latest publication; he was apparently endorsing its tone and prescriptions.

To be fair, the report does have some good ideas. The idea of civil birth ceremonies is not a bad idea. Nor is the endorsement for better paid teachers in deprived areas. But the overall tone of the report's launch plays into a general idea that young people have never had it so bad and have never been so unhappy with their lot.

In explaining why they concluded that young people are allegedly so much more unhappy today, one of the report's authors, Richard Layard told the Today programme that it was because so many of them had 'psychiatric problems.' Hence the report's recommendation that we train 1000 more psychological therapists. But do they really? Or are we just relabelling lots of things that would previously have been treated as a normal part of growing up?

And, well done to the Children's minister Beverley Hughes, quoted in yesterday's Observer, for nailing the canard that testing is making youngsters unhappy.

Children needed some stresses and challenges to develop the necessary resilience for adult life, she said. "I think that largely the impact on children of doing tests can be mediated by parents and schools," she added."I have always felt that being tested is a part of life that you have to get used to and for a child you can make that something to be scared of or you can do it in a way that normalises it."

This blog has been picked up by the Teachers' TV website.

Testing must stay

Lord Sutherland's report on this summer's testing fiasco is a tale of incompetence and wishful thinking. It clearly catalogues the role of both the curriculum authority and the contractor, ETS Europe, in causing entirely preventable problems with the tests. But their failures must not become an excuse - as the teaching unions clearly hope - for the wholesale abandonment of tests.

Ed Balls has already scrapped the tests at 14. I think he should have reformed the tests rather than abandoning them. But what's done is done. However, at least we have in GCSE results a degree of external accountability for the achievements of secondary schools. Without external tests at Key Stage 2, we would have no such measure in primary schools.

At a time when the Government is experimenting with controversial curriculum changes, it is more important than ever that we know whether or not individual primary schools are doing their primary task - teaching youngsters to read, write and add up. This doesn't mean there is no case for reform of the Key Stage 2 tests; it does mean that we need externally set and marked tests that every older primary pupil is required to sit.

Those who think this is a terrible burden clearly have short memories. The reason the national tests were introduced was because we used to have no idea whether or not primary schools were doing their job. When the first national test results were published in 1995, and over half of all youngsters failed to reach the expected standard (it is now 20%), the country was shocked. When individual school results were published despite the objections of the teaching unions, we learnt how apparently similar schools were achieving radically different results.

In short, those same forces who are now demanding an end to testing had conspired to hide the truth from parents and taxpayers. The problems with this year's tests must not become an excuse to return to those days. And Schools Secretary Ed Balls must speak up loudly and clearly in favour of school standards - after all, they matter most to the least advantaged children who lack the parental support to get on without decent schooling.

The teachers' case for Key Stage 3 tests

My arguments in favour of keeping the Key Stage 3 tests obviously came to nought. But do read what Oliver Quantrill, a Maths teacher at Lavington School, Wiltshire, has to say on the subject in this week's TES, where his views are carried alongside two other teachers who seem pleased that the tests are gone. I suspect he speaks for a substantial number of his profession.

We will still be doing an internal assessment, as I suspect will most schools, and we will try as hard as we can to make it as formal as possible so we can motivate pupils to take it seriously, get themselves prepared for the start of the GCSE course and give us and them an accurate assessment of their current level in the subject.

The fact that this is no longer an external exam means it will be harder to convince them to take it seriously and we will have less chance of identifying those whose under-performance in lessons might be masking their actual potential. It also means pupils will have less experience of this kind of formal test and so will find the GCSE exams that much more daunting.

We, in our maths department, feel that the maths Sats paper is a good test of abilities....All that happens now is our department will have to put in a significant extra amount of time and effort marking and moderating our own set of papers. Scrapping a good test, which is a reliable measure of a pupil's progress, seems short-sighted.

The end of Key Stage 3 tests

The scrapping of Key Stage 3 tests for 14 year-olds was probably inevitable given the recent testing fiasco, and the greater importance now placed on GCSE scores in English and Maths. And, for most schools the tests had ceased to be treated as of great importance. It is important that Key Stage 2 tests are to remain as the only independent tests in primary schools. However, for one group of schools, the tests have been an important barometer: those that are improving from failure. It will be vital that they can continue to access externally moderated measures of their improvement if the drive to turn around failing schools and to establish new academies is not to be pushed into reverse.

Passing the test?

I have written the cover feature in this week's Public Finance magazine, in defence of national tests. You can read it here.

The case for testing

I have a column in this morning's Independent, making the case for keeping the national tests:

Tests allow parents to compare schools on an objective basis. They could accept what schools say is happening: but without external validation, does anyone imagine that there won't be pressures on some schools in a competitive admissions system to exaggerate a little? More recently, tests have also been a great source of data for schools. Their data are used by most teachers to help set ambitious pupil goals, a key to school improvement. There is a difference between recognising the need for external accountability and believing that the system we have at present is the right one to achieve it.

There is a case for some reform; after 13 years, it would be surprising if it were otherwise. With tests at seven now marked by teachers, the only national tests before GCSEs are at 11 and 14, hardly a sign of over-testing. But confining the external tests to maths and English, leaving science to be marked internally, would help with shortages of markers and reduce time spent on external tests, while ensuring accountability in the basics.

In defence of (reformed) Key Stage 3 tests

Yesterday's publication of this year's Key Stage 3 tests came with an increasingly vocal call for their abandonment. The results have, apparently, changed little in the last four years, so the tests are said to serve no useful purpose. Let teachers mark them, goes the cry from correspondents on newspapers that normally serve as the last bastions of support for accountability.

But such siren calls should be ignored. The tests may be too much for able youngsters who can breeze through a level 5 - the expected standard - but in schools that are struggling to escape from failure and low attainment, they are an important step towards success, and a vital external vindication of their efforts. This is as true of academies that started from scratch as it is of schools coming out of special measures. Of course, such institutions need to be innovative to succeed, but they need validation that their efforts are not merely a modish experiment, and are leading to practical - and measurable - results.

This is not to say there should not be changes. External testing could be confined to English ands Maths, the two basic subjects that matter most. Given the increased focus on these subjects at GCSE, it is a valuable progress check for teachers. The science lobby may be dissatisfied with internal marking, but the government should do far more to maximise the availability of triple science at GCSE at the same time as dropping the external science test. This change would have the added benefit of reducing the pressure on the markers.

The second change should be in timing. 13 should become the normal age at which the tests are taken, rather than 14. A growing number of schools do this already. This would give greater encouragement for remedial teaching in the 3Rs where it was needed. It would allow an extra GCSE preparation year for those who needed it and more opportunities for a sort of 'gap year' of arts, culture, volunteering and sports for those who didn't. Schools could opt to enter pupils in Year 9 if they wished, but Year 8 would become the norm. The progress tests - where pupils cannot exceed the level for which they are entered - are a disaster waiting to happen, because of their complexity; this is a far more straightforward way to allow pupils to be tested when ready.

And thirdly, the value added measures used by the government in its league tables, already far too complicated in their make-up, should concentrate on progress from Key Stage 2 to Key Stage 4, and not offer any perverse incentive to underperform at Key Stage 3.

With these changes, Key Stage 3 would continue to provide a vital external progress check on the 3Rs, but would do so in a way that freed schools and markers without losing independent accountability.

A statistics test

Your statistics question for 10: Which is likely to be more accurate?

The test results of 600,000 11-year-olds published today in aggregate form, and showing a modest improvement, with the insistence of the scrupulously independent chief national statistician and the independent exam regulator that their 99% sample is a fair reflection of the overall national test results for 2008, despite some delays in their marking.

or

A survey by a right wing think tank, which has never knowingly supported anything associated with the Labour government, that quickly questioned 107 out of 9600 secondary school heads of maths, science or English (about 1%, with a sample skewed towards heads of English) about the quality of SATs at the height of the fuss about this year's tests (problems which actually affected Key Stage 3 English tests most) telling us that they have no confidence in the tests.

Testing times

Clearly, ETS have made a hash of their contract for the national tests, and should not be able to keep it in the future. Of course, the government cannot say so as Michael Gove, the shadow schools secretary demanded on Today this morning, but there must be no question of their ineptitude being rewarded. But, what then? The answer is certainly not, as the more excitable teaching union leaders mught wish, to scrap external marking for national tests. Particularly at 11 - but also at 14 - they are a vital progress check not just for pupils but for teachers, and it is extraordinary that anyone could believe that the only check on literacy and numeracy standards on primary schools should be done by the schools and teachers themselves.

There are, however, serious issues about the future of the tests which go beyond the immediate question of the ETS incompetence. The first is whether the current plan for progress tests - where pupils sit 'level tests' that can only be passed to that level - should continue, and whether a simpler form of flexibility might not make more sense? Plenty of schools enter their pupils for Key Stage 3 tests at 13 rather than 14. Why not encourage the same flexibility in primaries where they want it, but keep the existing tests. The system would simply find it too hard to deal with the currently planned progress tests.

And there may also be a need for a more fundamental look at the content of the English and Maths tests, in particular, to ensure they are testing what we need to test, and giving secondary schools the information they need (too many feel the need to use the London reading test to supplement key stage tests). But above all - as this blog has argued before - we need to be clear that testing is here to stay, because of its importance to accountability and pupil progress. On that, there should be no compromise.

Mick tries it on in over testing

Mick Brookes, the anti-testing leader of the National Association of Head Teachers declares that because this year's national test results are late to schools, the whole exercise should be abandoned completely. But then Mr Brookes wants to scrap the tests anyway. He would prefer that his members judged their own results, without any external audit. But surely it is better that schools get the results late than never, not least for the youngsters who sat them. But a nice try, anyway.