Testing saga - where will it end?

Analysis
By Hannah Richardson
BBC News education reporter

Key Stage 2 results form the basis of the primary league tables

The latest development in this summer's national testing saga has brought the familiar calls from teaching unions to end what is called high-stakes testing.

In fact, the whole debacle has led to an open season on testing.

This time, teachers' leaders used the ending of the ETS contract to say there was too short a time for a new firm to be found to run the tests in 2009.

Instead, they argue, the whole system skews education in England, stresses teachers and pupils and must be axed.

Association of School and College Leaders general secretary Dr John Dunford argues nine months is just too short a run-in for a new firm to be appointed, for the infrastructure to be prepared, and for markers to be recruited and trained.

The government needs to take this golden opportunity to completely overhaul its testing regime Dr Mary Bousted

"Many markers have lost confidence in the system and, even with ETS out of the picture, it will be difficult to deliver a wholly successful system in 2009," he said.

"In the long-term, appointing a new administrator for these tests is akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

"The testing and examination system is sinking under its own weight and it is time for the government to examine seriously how it can streamline the assessment regime and again make it fit for purpose."

His views are reflected by Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, who said: "It is simply not possible for the QCA to appoint a new test contractor to deliver the Sats exams for 2009.

"The government needs to take this golden opportunity to completely overhaul its testing regime, and in the interim should suspend Sats for 2009."

Most teaching unions want the external tests replaced with teacher-led assessments to monitor pupils' progress.

Teachers and head teachers are not the only ones who do not like the national tests and the way they are used to measure school performance and compile school league tables.

Numerous academics and educationalists have claimed testing along with a burgeoning national curriculum narrows children's ability to learn well.

The Welsh Assembly scrapped them and they have not been used in Scotland since devolution.

The Commons Children, Schools and Families Committee concluded the national testing system in English schools was being misused to the detriment of children's education.

'Stress-free tests?'

But parents like the tests, or so we are told, because they enable them to keep an eye on their children's progress.

Education Secretary Ed Balls appears to be holding firm on the issue - but for how long is not clear.

He is insistent that as long as a new contract is in place by November, which means starting the tendering process in September, there is time enough for the same national tests to be run and managed in the summer of 2009.

However, he professes to understand some of the concerns of his colleagues in schools and colleges.

"We want testing to work in a way that is not stressful for children and tracks individual progress.

"I am open-minded about reform and I am not saying that the current system is set in stone."

He has even said he wants young primary schoolchildren not to be aware that they are being tested when they sit their Sats.

In a sense it is the government's position that it is not testing in itself that harms children, but the way that schools obsess over tests and results.

But there are signs that Mr Balls may indeed use the summer Sats "shambles" to make a graceful retreat from a system that has come in for so much criticism.

He admitted in an interview with BBC News that part of the reason that the next national test contract will only run for one year is so ministers can digest and act on what Lord Sutherland, the peer appointed to review this year's problems, has to say on the wider issue of testing.

Open door?

He said: "The wrong thing for us to do would be to suspend the tests in 2009.

"We think that continuing on with externally evaluated national tests is important for parents, schools and education."

But he said they were piloting other tests that monitor children's individual progress, and looking at bringing in more flexibility to tests.

Earlier in the week he wrote in the Independent that he was attracted to the testing-when-ready principle, whereby children take tests when their teachers think they can pass them.

He wrote: "I'll only implement it following a rigorous evaluation of whether it helps children make faster progress.

"Far from abandoning independent assessment, I hope the new tests will allow parents to get much more useful information on how their child is progressing."

But on the day the ETS contract came to an end, he said he would not be drawn on changes before Lord Sutherland had delivered his interim report.

And he stressed he would not implement a new set of tests before the many challenges associated with doing so had been overcome.

"We will look at what Lord Sutherland's inquiry says in the autumn," he said, leaving the door open for possible changes in 2010.