Posts Tagged SATS
Micro-mismanagement
Posted by Anastasia de Waal in Education on 24/07/2009
The Children, Schools and Families Select Committee released its findings yesterday on the role of ministers in the 2008 Sats fiasco, which saw hundreds of thousands of Key Stage 3 pupils waiting months for their test results.
Failing all tests
Posted by Anastasia de Waal in Education on 17/07/2009
Problems with primary testing, from distorting the curriculum to painting a misleadingly positive view of basic standards in primary school, have been at the forefront of the school standards debate for well over a year now.
“And in the twilight zone, trees are purple (not blue, as Gove claims!)”
Posted by Claire Daley in Education on 27/08/2008
Dr Ruth Lupton of the Institute of Education has taken the Conservative’s recent education report, A Failed Generation, to task for using dodgy statistics to claim that the education gap between rich and poor has widened on New Labour’s watch. Her criticisms are powerful but not exactly an overwhelming indictment of the report. One of its claims was based on a statistic on SATS mistakenly provided by the DCSF suggesting, helpfully, that results of repeated information requests from government departments are not especially accurate.
Survey reveals that 90% of secondary schools find Key Stage 2 Sats results do not reflect pupils’ true abilities
Posted by Nick Cowen in Education on 05/08/2008
On the day the Key Stage 2 Sats results are released, a new report from independent think-tank Civitas, Fast Track to Slow Progress, based on a nationwide survey of 107 secondary schools, reveals that 9 out of 10 secondary school teachers cannot rely on them:
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90% of secondary school teachers surveyed have found the Key Stage 2 Sats results to be inconsistent with pupils’ true abilities, this last school year
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79% of secondary school teachers have found that up to a third of their Year 7 year-group’s abilities have been lower than their Key Stage 2 Sats results, this last school year
ETS, SATS and leaves
Posted by Nick Cowen in Education on 16/07/2008
The past month has the seen the Government’s SATS exam system implode in the bureaucratic equivalent of an ageing star collapsing into a black hole. There were delays to the SATS results and claims that the delays were just to make sure that the release was orderly and complete. Then the release this week was neither orderly nor complete with some results delayed until September and head teachers have been forced to send poorly marked or unmarked exam scripts back to the company, ETS Europe, that is meant to be managing the scheme. There was blood on the radio 4 airwaves this morning as John Humphrys eviscerated Ken Boston for the QCA’s handling of the scheme and it turns out ETS Europe have managed to score a lucrative £156 million 5-year contract to administer the SATS marking.