YP Comment: Standards is the critical test

EVEN though Education Secretary Justine Greening has moved to abolish compulsory school tests for seven-year-olds, this doesn't appear sufficient to assuage those teaching unions who remain on a collision course with the Government.
PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo.PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo.
PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo.

However fundamental failings with education policy must not be masked by this political stand-off.

Testing and monitoring is required, whether surreptitiously or officially, because youngsters learn 
at different rates and 
some begin their formal schooling with few or no skills because some parents do not always have the academic abilities to read a book or engage with their children.

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Equally the number of youngsters who complete their primary education with an inadequate grasp of literacy and numeracy only compounds the considerable challenges facing modern secondary schools.

Yet, because the success or failure of education reforms are invariably judged by the annual GCSE pass-rate, policies pertaining to primary schools have not been subject to sufficient scrutiny. However they could not be more crucial. If children are inspired at an early age, there’s every likelihood they will succeed as they move seamlessly through the year groups. As such, the row about tests must not stand in the way of the more fundamental question – what is the best, and most effective, way of improving standards in the country’s primary schools?