Minister hits back over parents' testing '˜strike'

Schools minister Nick Gibb has defended tests for primary school children saying they exist to hold schools to account and that 'no child should be put under stress' by the assessments.
Education Minister Nick GibbEducation Minister Nick Gibb
Education Minister Nick Gibb

The Tory minister had come under criticism from parents who said that children were being over-tested.

At the annual conference of the Boarding Schools’ Association (BSA) in Manchester he told delegates that tests ensured that young people were leaving primary school literate and numerate and “on a par with the best performing countries of the world”.

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He said: “Primary school assessments are there to hold schools to account, they have no real consequences for the young people taking them, they are not qualifications. The assessments are there to ensure that we are holding schools to account; that every school is delivering quality education.”

Mr Gibb added that he was “confident” that schools were “very well prepared” and were “teaching the curriculum very successfully” despite some schools themselves saying pupils were tested too hard.

In protest at the controversial Sats exams, some parents kept their children off school on Tuesday in a day of action organised by the Let Our Kids Be Kids campaign.

Mr Gibb said: “We are introducing more rigorous new tests at primary schools - this has led to the claim that English pupils are the most over-tested in the world - a claim which any inspection of international evidence shows is unfounded.

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“Tests at the end of primary school are absolutely imperative in ensuring that all pupils are equipped with numeracy and literacy which enables them to thrive at secondary school. This isn’t currently the case.”

The minister that in countries such as South Korea and Singapore the proportion of “functionally literate and numerate” pupils aged 15 is over 90 per cent.

In comparison, Mr Gibb told the conference, in England only 82 per cent of pupils are functionally literate at the age of 15, and 77 per cent are judged functionally numerate.

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