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NEWS • VIEWS • INFORMATION • ADVICE





KEY STAGE 2 TESTING ALERT



Last year Lord Bew was tasked by the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, to examine the current system of Key Stage 2 testing and assessment.



All of his recommendations were accepted by the Secretary of State and at the time the NASUWT warned that these would simply exacerbate the already excessive workload burdens of primary teachers.



The Bew recommendations are now being implemented.





The main changes to this year’s tests are:



National Curriculum tests in mathematics and reading will be administered in line with previous years’ arrangements and the tests will continue to be marked externally.

Interim arrangements, similar to the approach at the end of Key Stage 1, will be in place for this year’s writing assessment, ahead of fully implementing Lord Bew’s recommendations for writing in 2013. Teachers will be expected to grade pupils by making a judgement of their work across Year 6. These judgements will be informed by pupils’ results on a standard test that will be sent to schools earlier in the spring term. Schools can either set the test at a time of their own choosing and mark it internally or schedule the test during the official test week in May and have the papers externally marked.

Teacher assessments in writing (and not test results) will be published.

A sample of the school’s teacher assessment judgements in writing will be subject to external moderation.

Schools will be required to submit teacher assessment judgements for all pupils in English, maths and science (including their attainment targets).





WARNING



A number of schools have indicated that they will mark the tests internally.



The NASUWT strongly advises teachers to check whether their school has done this and make clear that they will not be marking the tests.



Not only does internal marking add to the workload of teachers, it leaves individual teachers vulnerable to challenge about the standard of marking.



The NASUWT national action instructions cover teachers refusing to undertake internal marking of the SATs.



Visit www.nasuwt.org.uk/Curriculum