League tables for 14-year-olds abandoned after Sats fiasco
THE Sats fiasco has forced ministers to abandon school league tables for 14-year-olds.
The Government had intended to release the tables ranking schools on the test results despite concerns from teachers that marking was unreliable.
But Children's Secretary Ed Balls has now decided that it does not "make sense" to ask secondary schools to submit their grades for inclusion in tables this year.
The decision to abandon the rankings follows the failure to deliver test results on time to 1.2 million children in the summer.
Errors by the private marking firm hired to run the tests, ETS Europe, and the government exams quango, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, were blamed for the shambles in a report published on Tuesday.
Last August, the QCA severed ETS's £156 million, five-year contract and it was ordered to pay back more than £24 million.
In previous years, ministers have published results for the tests in English, maths and science for individual schools to be ranked in the tables.
Primary school tables have been delayed by at least three months while they check their results.
Mr Balls said he would not be asking secondary schools to do the same. "I do not think it makes sense to put schools through the process of checking individual results school-by-school, and so it is not my intention to do so," he said.
The minister has already decided to abolish compulsory Sats for 14-year-olds from next year. Instead teenagers will be measured through ongoing teacher assessment.
Labour MP David Chaytor told the Times Educational Supplement that most schools would be "delighted" by the news. But the decision to scrap the league tables for 14-year-olds will raise fresh concerns over the reliability of the marking. Officials have insisted that despite the delays in sending results to schools, the quality of marking has not been affected.
However, there has been a four-fold rise in the number of schools appealing against their Sats results in the wake of the marking problems.
Last year 50,000 test grades were queried but this year the number has jumped to 200,000. An independent inquiry, headed by Lord Sutherland, into the shambles, found "massive failings" in the delivery of the tests.
The QCA moved swiftly to abolish the National Assessment Agency, its division responsible for delivering national curriculum tests, and suspended NAA managing director David Gee.
Dr Ken Boston, chief executive of the QCA, was also suspended, despite resigning at the weekend. Reviews of test papers are expected to be completed next month.
