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SATs Testing

I hope that notwithstanding those comments the Secretary of State will accept that if we are to have a high-stakes national testing system we must have a high-quality marking system that enjoys confidence. I hope that the Secretary of State would acknowledge that this year's marking of the key stage 2 and 3 tests has been nothing short of a complete shambles. The Secretary of State acknowledged that he gave an assurance to this House more than two months ago that the key stage tests were on track, yet in spite of that reassurance 130,000 scripts for key stage 3 English have yet to be marked. Is he prepared to accept some responsibility on his part and on that of his ministerial team for the failure to act in that two-month period? Interestingly, he acknowledged a moment ago that he and his ministerial colleagues were aware of the problems before he made the statement in the House on 19 May that the tests were on track. Will he tell us in his response when he and his ministerial colleagues were first made aware of the problems that there have been this year? On the issue of the reliability of marking, is the Secretary of State not extraordinarily complacent and very premature to assume that we can have confidence in this year's key stage test marking? That is particularly the case in the light of the number of complaints that there have already been about key stage 2 English and that there are likely to be about key stage 3 English tests when they are marked and sent out. Will he confirm that the assessment that has been made by Ofqual, which he seems so keen to rely on, appears to be only a somewhat cursory assessment of the processes that have been used and not of the results? Schools that end up having to appeal against the results could face costs of £6.50 per script or £180 per school or per set of results. Will he consider waiving those fees this year so that schools in this country do not end up paying for the incompetence of the Government and ETS? On ETS, does he accept that it is fairly clear from all the evidence so far that ETS has demonstrated unfitness to run the contract this year? Will the Secretary of State tell us whether any payments have been made so far to ETS out of the extraordinary £165 million that the Government will pay to that company over the next five years to administer the tests? Can he also tell us, without going into the detail of the contracts that have been signed, whether the QCA and the Government have the power to cancel ETS's contract without paying penalties if it can be demonstrated that ETS has acted in a negligent and incompetent way in administering the test this year? On the time scale for the Sutherland inquiry, the Secretary of State has given us the usual ministerial vagueness, saying that the report will be delivered in the autumn. Can he be a little clearer about when he expects the report to come back? Can he indicate the latest date by which it would be necessary for the Government to make a decision if they are to put in place a new contractor for the 2009 tests, given the sensitivity of the time scales involved? On the future of the testing regime, I think the Secretary of State said that the Select Committee was supportive of some form of national testing, and indeed it was, but it was also extremely critical of the existing testing regime. In his comments at the end of his statement about single level tests and other adjustments that could be made, there was a sense of the deckchairs being shuffled around on the Titanic, given what we have seen with the marking of the tests this year and the much wider criticisms that have been made. Nobody is suggesting going back to a system of zero accountability, but when it is clear that the existing testing regime is collapsing under its own grotesque weight, do we not need a more fundamental review of that regime than the one that the Secretary of State is hinting at? Do we not need to axe some of the unhelpful and irrelevant tests, such as those at key stage 3, which have a low value in terms of school accountability and pupil assessment? Should we not put some of the enormous amount of money that could be saved by reducing the scale of testing into early diagnosis and early intervention to address some of the root causes of the challenges faced by so many young people in our education system today?