A CALL TO SCHOOL LEADERS

Please add your name to the SATs: Manifesto for Change, which has been developed in consultation with school leaders, the National Education Union and other influential education experts, including representatives from the NAHT, the school leaders' union.

It has been fully endorsed by school leaders, the NEU, former Schools Minister Lord Jim Knight and other prominent educationalists.

By signing, you will join the call for an independent review to consider substantial reform of primary assessment and accountability, with SATs paused in the meantime.

SATS: MANIFESTO FOR CHANGE

The evidence is clear. Research with school leaders, teachers, parents, carers and pupils demonstrates an urgent need for reform of SATs and statutory accountability measures in our primary schools.

The Department for Education states that the purpose of SATs is “to measure school performance and to make sure individual pupils have the support that they need as they move into secondary school”.

SATs are reductive, expensive (currently £47 million per year in Standards and Testing Agency costs alone*) and do not have the confidence of the profession or parents. Both groups judge that SATs are not an accurate reflection either of school performance or individual pupil attainment and do nothing to support the transition to secondary. They provide a simplistic measure of attainment which lacks context or understanding of external factors and, most importantly, they have done nothing to close the disadvantage gap.

The high stakes nature of SATs also creates: narrowing of the curriculum; teaching to the test; constraints on children’s love of learning, natural curiosity and self-motivation; damage to wellbeing and mental health for children and teachers; declining retention rates for teachers; unwarranted pressure on children, teachers and families and, in recent years, 41% of children being labelled as failures immediately before starting secondary school.

We support a school leader-, teacher-, and parent-led review, chaired by an independent expert, to consider effective and substantial reform of SATs and statutory accountability measures. In the meantime, we call for SATs to be paused, as they were in 2020 and 2021 with no ill effects. Year 6 teachers would assess children's performance throughout the year, as they do in every other primary school year.

High standards in education must be maintained. Criteria for judging standards in schools should emphasise these aspects: maintaining a broad and balanced curriculum that all children can access; supporting love of learning, natural curiosity and independent thinking; good mental health and wellbeing for pupils and staff, and building skills that prepare children for life’s opportunities and challenges.

Schools must be held to account, but this needs to be done in a fair, accurate and responsive way. On-going low-pressure, low-stakes assessment is highly effective, supports all children’s learning and provides much richer, more useful data. Reforming the system offers a genuine opportunity for all stakeholders (school leaders, teachers, parents, the DfE) to access better data and use it in better ways.

Limited SATs test data plays too dominant a role in characterising pupils’ attainment. It’s time to reclaim primary education and put children’s learning, wellbeing and achievements at the heart of our assessment system.

An alternative statutory assessment system should be developed** with the involvement of all stakeholders to ensure all schools are able to support learning and accurately capture the attainment of their learners. While an alternative is being developed, all SATs should be halted with immediate effect.

**This figure does not take into account the significant costs, both financial and human, involved with children who become disengaged or excluded from school and learning. This is because the current high-pressure system tells a large proportion of pupils that they have not reached age-related expectations each year, embedding feelings of failure – and therefore disengagement – from an early age.

**Due consideration should be given to well-researched and expert work already developed by bodies including BERA and ICAPE.

SIGNATORIES

Dr Kulvarn Atwal, Executive Headteacher, Highlands Primary and Uphall Primary Schools & ICAPE Commissioner

Caroline Derbyshire, CEO, Saffron Academy Trust & Chair, Headteachers’ Roundtable

Jason Elsom, CEO, Parentkind

Ty Goddard, Director, Education Foundation

Daniel Kebede, General Secretary, National Education Union

Lord Jim Knight, former Schools Minister & Chair, Beyond Ofsted

Alison Kriel, Independent Education & Leadership Consultant, Keynote Speaker

Dean Logan, CEO, Fylde Coast Academy Trust

Mark Mitchell, Headteacher, Balsall Common Primary School

Matt Morden, Headteacher, Surrey Square Primary School

Efua Poku-Amanfo, Research Fellow, IPPR

Dr Mary Richardson, Professor of Educational Assessment, IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society

Liz Robinson, CEO, Big Education

Lord Mike Watson, Labour peer

Dominic Wyse, Professor of Early Childhood and Primary Education, UCL IOE & Co-Chair, ICAPE