Best Practice

Assessment chaos: From Baseline to SATs

SATs Performance tables Life after levels
It has been quite a year for assessment. With a backdrop of parent protests, leaks and anxiety over changing standards, the SATs have been particularly chaotic. On top of this, the long planned introduction of the Reception Baseline was suddenly axed after ministers admitted it couldn’t work. Suzanne O’Connell looks at how schools have handled this assessment chaos

It has been an interesting year for primary schools when it comes to assessment. With a new system to implement, changing floor standards and framework, headteachers and their schools have still ploughed ahead and delivered the new arrangements for SATs.

The introduction of the new tests hasn’t gone smoothly for the Department for Education (DfE). The last few weeks leading up to SATs and the week of tests themselves saw the department attempting to shrug off and reduce the potential scandal of leaked papers.

News of the first leak came in April, when it was revealed that the key stage 1 spelling, punctuation and grammar (SPAG) test had been published along with practice papers on the DfE’s website. In this case, the whole test had to be scrapped leaving many year 2 teachers frustrated at wasted preparation time.

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