School target shake-up discussed

There has been a big improvement in primary schools

The government is thinking about changing the targets schools are given about what children are expected to be able to do at certain ages.

The Education Secretary Charles Clarke told MPs too many targets gave teachers a "sense of confusion", and reducing them would give more clarity.

However, he resisted suggestions that tests should be scrapped for children aged seven or 11.

Currently children take national tests at the ages of seven, 11 and 14.

"Rationalise targets"

Answering questions put by MPs on the Commons education select committee, Mr Clarke said: "I would accept ... the need to rationalise our targets to make them more clear and create a regime with less initiatives.

" I would not be in favour at all of removing a targeting regime."

He told MPs modifying targets would mean either cutting their number of making them clearer.

Mr Clarke said that criticism that there were too many targets "had some weight" and that he could imagine a "different process of testing".

He added there was no doubt that the targets published by the government had had a "significant impact on improving performance".

The government was criticised by schools' inspectors at Ofsted last month for failing to reach its literacy targets.

A report on the national literacy strategy showed an estimated 200,000 seven year olds were not reaching the standard expected in reading while 240,000 were failing to do so in writing.

But literacy and numeracy standards in primary schools have risen generally over the past few years, an improvement the government attributes to the strategy which brought in the literacy and numeracy hours.

Critics of the present system complain that primary school teachers spend too much time "teaching to the test", leaving little time for subjects which are not tested.