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Testing and Assessment

I thank the Secretary of State for advance notice of the statement and the chance to read some of the expert group's recommendations. I also join him in thanking the expert group for its work and commitment, which I know he shares, to doing everything that it can to improve state education for all children. Today's statement follows the fiasco of last year's standard assessment tests—SATs—when the Government presided over a comprehensive shambles. It was both an administrative disaster, for which some have paid the price, and a challenge to all of us to think about how we can improve the testing and assessment regime in our schools. The Secretary of State was right to say that the regime that he inherited should not be set in stone, but, even as we constantly strive to improve how we assess our children, does he not agree that we should also ensure that the assessment process is built on certain enduring principles? Last October, the Secretary of State said that it was right that all the tests at key stage 2, including science, should be subject to external assessment. He specifically said that in his judgment,""parents want the same certainty at key stage 2…that they currently get with GCSE"." That is the certainty that externally set and marked tests provide. He argued then against sampling, because that would deprive parents of""objective evidence on the performance of an individual school"" and would not deliver for "every parent" a reliable guide to their child's progress. Further to that, he argued:""Asking schools to take on the burden"" of teacher assessment would add to the bureaucratic load on teachers and simply""would not be the right thing to do for parents." —[Official Report, 14 October 2008; Vol. 480, c. 684-90.]" That is why he rejected the road of teacher assessment for English, maths and science at key stage 2. What has changed to make him abandon those principles now? Why should parents not have the certainty that external assessment in science provides? Why should parents now have less objective information about their children's progress? Why should they now lose out on valuable information with which they can measure the performance of individual schools? Crucially, if teacher assessment is right for science, why is it not right for English and maths? I am delighted that the Secretary of State has the support of the Royal Society and others in designing a new, improved science test for key stage 2. However, if the new sample test is so good, why is every child not allowed to sit it? Improving our performance in science education is crucial to improving our economic performance as a nation and vital if the next generation are to grow up as rational, questioning and informed citizens with the knowledge and skills to master the challenges of an ever more complex world, but today's announcement comes against a backdrop of declining faith in the rigour of the science education that we offer young people. In GCSE science, students are asked whether people look at stars with microscopes or telescopes and whether the fact that nuclear power stations provide jobs is an argument in favour of nuclear power or against it. They are asked whether seat belts are a safety feature in cars, whether the sun orbits around the earth and whether battered sausages are healthier than grilled fish. Many of the questions are not tests of scientific knowledge and involve only straightforward English comprehension. The Royal Society of Chemistry has said that changes to the science curriculum have been "a catastrophe". Just last week, the Government announced the downgrading of science in the primary curriculum as part of a broader relegation of the importance of subject disciplines. Is now not precisely the wrong time to downgrade science and move away from rigour? Should the Secretary of State not be outlining ways in which assessment of all children, and not just a sample few, is to become clearly and unambiguously more authoritative, rigorous and stretching? As the Secretary of State knows, parents want more rigour and better information about how their children are doing. That is why we welcome the principle of a report card that outlines in greater detail how schools are performing, so that parents have a more rounded picture of achievement. However, if it is right for there to be more information overall, how can it be right to have less information on how children are doing in science? If it is also right to ensure that we better reflect how children are stretched and challenged and how the less able are helped to improve in primary school, should that not apply to GCSE league tables as well? Should we not move away from the current focus on the C/D borderline so that we have a measure of testing how schools perform that rewards those that stretch the most able and also those that encourage less able children to do even better? I hope that the Secretary of State will be open-minded about such a change. Like many, we share the Secretary of State's concerns about teaching to the test, but is not the answer to improve the quality of the externally set tests rather than to abandon them? If the Government are really concerned about teaching to the test and about narrowing the curriculum, why are they pressing ahead with their plans for what they have called single-level tests? Would their plans not mean that, instead of a one-off measure of real performance, children would be sitting tests again and again throughout primary school, as schools strived to improve their league table performance? Would they not mean that teaching and learning would be crowded out by tests and cramming to prepare for the growth in testing? We know that parents support clear, rigorous and transparent testing at the end of primary school. According to the Government's own statistics, three quarters of parents believe that externally marked tests in every subject at the end of primary education are accurate and worth while. We need the most accurate possible information about how our children and our schools are doing. At a time of economic upheaval and transformation, we need a stronger emphasis on science in our schools, and we need the sharpest possible accountability in every area of academic performance. Sadly, I fear that by declining to stand up to outside pressure and by retreating on the principle of external assessment, the Secretary of State has failed the test of ensuring that he defends what is best for our children.