Schools that took part in the trial have been told to send in the data, which the DfE says will be used to set standards for seven-year-olds.
Teaching unions have slammed the idea. They had previously welcomed the Government’s decision to axe the spelling test, which all Year 2 pupils had been due to take, after it was discovered that it had been posted online several months ago by mistake.
Meanwhile, thousands of parents are keeping their Year 2 children at home today, in protest against the standard assessment tests (SATs), which they are threatening to boycott.
Ten days ago, it emerged that a teacher at a school taking part in the trial had discovered that the spelling paper all Year 2 children in England are due to take this month had been accidentally published as a practice paper by the Standards and Testing Agency.
Subsequently schools minister Nick Gibb confirmed that schools would not need to hold the spelling test this year.
Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) said,
‘Ministers were right to cancel the key stage 1 SPAG test for this year after discovering it had been available online since January.
‘The test has been compromised and any data gathered from it is invalid. It is a complete nonsense for ministers to use the data from schools who have already run this test for setting standards for seven-year-olds. Teachers will not have confidence in any judgements drawn and submitting dodgy data to the DfE is a waste of their time when they already have an excessive workload. Nicky Morgan must now acknowledge that her assessment reforms are in serious trouble, it is time to go back to the drawing board.’
A Department for Education spokesperson said, ‘Early pilots for the Key Stage 1 grammar, punctuation and spelling tests were completed as planned last week, and the schools taking part have been asked to submit marked scripts this week. This will help set standards so that these schools can understand how pupils have done on the test – this information will be made available to other schools if they choose to administer the test. We will reconfirm the standards with teachers in 2017 for the tests that year.’
Parents’ protest
Meanwhile, more than 45,000 people have signed a petition started by the ‘Let our kids be kids’ campaign group, which has organised a day of protest on 3 May calling on parents to take their children out of school for a day of ‘fun learning’ to add weight to campaigns for schools to boycott SAT tests for Year 2 pupils.
On their website the campaigners say they want to ‘bring back the creativity and the fun – say goodbye to repetition and boredom…All year their curriculum has been centred around comprehension and arithmetic in order to pass these tests. Outdoor learning has decreased, childhood anxiety has increased, games have been replaced with grammar, playing with punctuation.’
A sample letter on the campaign website for parents to send to schools explaining their child’s absence on the day says, ‘A great number of parents nationwide are growing extremely concerned by the attitude taken by the Government towards the education of our children. We feel strongly that initiatives such as constant and early testing and academisation are being implemented without due consideration for the implications, and that as a result our children face unnecessary testing and a curriculum that limits enjoyment and real understanding.’
The letter stresses that campaigners fully support teachers and want them to ‘be allowed to teach effectively and without constant constraint in order to embed a life-long love of learning in our children.’