22nd April 2015 9:00
By Blue Tutors
The Conservative Party have revealed plans to impose resits on school pupils who do poorly on their SATs. Students who under perform in their primary school exams will have to resit during their first year of secondary school. It is estimated that over 100,000 students would be taking the new exam in year 7, in plans which the Prime Minister said would end tolerance of “failure and mediocrity” in schools. The conservatives said that the plans were designed to ensure that students had not already fallen behind before they reached secondary school.
Under the proposals, students who have not attained basic levels of reading, writing and maths by aged 11 would take a standardised English and Maths test in year 7 which would be marked by schools rather than external examiners. Up to two resits would be made available for the tests, after which time the number of students who failed the exam would be published as part of school league table data, with the proviso that students with special needs would be exempt from the exam. The Conservatives defended the plans, pointing out that only 7% of students who fail basic English and Maths tests at age 11 go on to gain five GCSEs graded A*-C including English and Maths.
The proposal has been met with criticism from schools and other political parties who argue that increasing testing of students won’t solve the problem. Labour’s shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt said that the test proposals were an attempt to disguise the failures of the conservative’s education system in which they failed to invest in raising the quality of teaching. The Liberal Democrats accused the Conservatives of having poured resources into a handful of free schools instead of addressing systemic problems in the education system. The Association of School and College Leaders responded to the proposals by saying that schools already had tests designed to identify and address problems with English and Maths with students coming up from primary school, and that the plans were a new stick with which to beat schools.