SATs Results — House of Commons, 2016-07-12
Topic: Education
Nicky Morgan (Conservative, Centre-right): I am of course aware of the concerns. I read emails and letters from teachers, and I have conversations with teachers at every school that I visit. Those concerns were inevitable, given that this was the first year. This was always going to be a challenging year, as is the case for the first year of any new tests. I say that as someone who took the new GCSEs in their first year, way back in the late 1980s. We have made moves to tackle the workload and we are, of course, listening to the feedback that teachers have given us this year as we think about the structure of the assessment frameworks for next year. We will continue to do that I talked about a positive attitude towards SATs because that is not unique. Polling from ComRes of 10 and 11-year-olds found that 62% of pupils either "don’t mind" or "enjoy" taking the tests. That is far more than the number who say that they "don’t like" or "hate" taking the tests As I said, I know that in the first year of these tests being rolled out, the administration was not as smooth as it could have been, and for that we have apologised. However, in the few cases where errors occurred, we took immediate action, ensuring that the overall roll-out of the new SATs was a success. Lower results do not represent a failure of our reforms. I have been very clear that it is not possible to compare this year’s results with last year’s. We have always been clear that because we not only introduced a new curriculum but raised the bar, results would be lower as the new curriculum is bedding in That brings into sharp relief the contrast between this Government and the Labour party. We want children to really understand the curriculum so that they can compete with the best in the world. We do not want to run the risk of them leaving school without the knowledge and skills that they need to succeed. The Labour party, in contrast, clearly appears quite happy for that to happen. Labour Members forget that it is not the children in schools in leafy areas with supportive parents who read to them every night who most need their primary curriculum to set them up for life. It is the ones who are not brought up with high aspirations and interested parents who need their teachers and schools to aim high for them, and that is what these tests and the new curriculum are about In fact, the results showed that schools have resoundingly risen to meet the higher bar: two thirds of pupils achieved the expected standard in reading; seven in 10 achieved it in mathematics; and almost three quarters achieved it in writing. Despite the doom-mongering from Labour Members, more than half of young people achieved the expected standard in all three subjects. That number will rise as schools and pupils experience more of the new curriculum What does this mean for children who did not meet the expected standard? It means one thing: secondary schools are now aware of that and are able to give those pupils the support that they need to catch up. It absolutely does not mean, and never has meant, that those children have somehow failed. The only people who have used these results to label children failures are the National Union of Teachers and now the Labour party. That is absolutely shameful.