---

Education and Skills Bill

As the Minister said, the Secretary of State announced that from summer 2009 children would not be required to take key stage 3 tests. The amendments were introduced on Report in the Lords to make technical changes resulting from that decision. Lords amendments Nos. 170, 181, 182 and 209 refer to the removal of the obligation on schools and local education authorities to implement the assessment arrangements in schools. We have consistently argued that there are problems with the content of some of the tests and that as a consequence they have, to some degree, become discredited. Those problems were compounded by the administration fiasco this summer. [Interruption.] The Minister looks surprised, but he knows that on current measurements 84,000 pupils in one year made no progress, or fell backwards, in English between key stage 2 and key stage 3.