Almost a year ago, Tony Blair told the Labour Party conference that he had “no reverse gear”. Ministers at the Department for Education and Skills, by contrast, appear to be operating from an entirely different driving manual. Rarely has an initiative by this Government been received with universal approval by the teaching unions. That this happened yesterday should be the cause of discomfort in Downing Street, if not, unfortunately, within a department that has opted for appeasement.
At present, seven-year-olds in England sit tests each spring in English and Maths. They are formally graded and that information is passed to parents along with a separate written assessment of their progress by their teacher. The information obtained by these Key Stage 1 tests allows parents to have some idea of where their child stands when compared with peers, to have an independent indication of the quality of teaching at their school and to compare their school with others locally. Ministers used to argue that such information was crucial to driving up standards. They were right. They have now changed their minds.
What Stephen Twigg, the Schools Minister, described yesterday as the “new assessment arrangements” represent not merely a retreat from testing but a damaging defeat for new Labour. In future, the scores achieved in these national curriculum tests will be subsumed within the report drawn up by the teacher, and the tests themselves will be taken at a time that the teacher deems appropriate. This approach is less independent than the current formula and will make it virtually impossible for parents to reach any meaningful conclusions about teachers and schools.
Ministers state that the new method will be as robust as its predecessor and point to a pilot study evaluated by the University of Leeds. That report did establish that the proposed change in assessment was popular with “stakeholders” such as teachers and local educational authorities. The education system was not established to serve them. Parental opinion was, however, far more ambiguous. Although this document claimed that most parents appeared to be “quite happy” about their experience when exposed to the new assessment system, there were “tensions in the views expressed”. The research indicated there was a “common desire” among parents to have “a good educational experience for their children” combined with “very full information from and about their school”. Many parents, the authors recorded, “want to know the tests results for the school, in order to make comparisons with other schools and the national picture”. With the new system, it was then dryly observed: “This is not possible.” Thus, “there may be a perception issue that will need to be addressed”.
The perception issue that the Education Secretary and his colleagues need to address is that they have sacrificed parents’ interests to secure a quieter life with the teaching unions. The leaders of those unions will move on to other targets. Steve Sinnott, the NUT general secretary, has called for national test results to be downgraded at ages of 11 and 14 also. Mr Twigg insists this will not happen. His credibility on this is now in doubt. Ministers protest they acted to reduce stress in schools. In truth, they have buckled largely to ease their stress in their department at the expense of the nation’s children.