Call to scrap tests for under-16s in the UK

A UK teaching standards watchdog - the General Teaching Council (GTC) - has called for the national exams sat by under-16s in England's schools to be scrapped, claiming the tests are failing to raise standards and placed "added stress" on pupils, teachers and parents.

Instead of tests at the ages of seven, 11 and 14, the GTC said standards could be checked by monitoring a sample of pupils.

But the UK Department for Education said parents valued the information gleaned from tests and they would remain. Education Secretary Alan Johnson said the current testing regime provided transparency, openness and accountability.

"Parents don't want to go back to a world where schools were closed institutions, where no-one knew what was going on in them," he said.

In England every student sits for a total of eight national curriculum tests, also known as standard assessment tests (Sats), at the ages of seven, 11 and 14, before undertaking GCSE and A-level examinations. According to the GTC, at some schools children can face about 70 tests or exams in formal settings between the ages of seven and 16.

Keith Bartley, GTC chief executive, said: "We need to trust teachers more and let them do what they are trained for." He said employers "want to see better skilled youngsters" and were not concerned about results of exams they sat for when they were seven.

Earlier this year the head of the exams authority also suggested samples of pupils, rather than all pupils, could be tested to check standards in England. However, Ken Boston, chief executive of the UK's Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, said Sats should stay for the time being, but could eventually be replaced by progress-testing.

The GTC, which is an independent regulatory body working to promote better standards of teaching, maintains that testing a sample of children, rather than every child, would help ease pressure on them.

Adopting such a system would still see teachers set exams drawn from a national "bank of tests" appropriate to their pupils. The GTC says Sats are defended because they measure the position schools obtain in performance tables on the back of the results.

The GTC is hoping that an inquiry by the education select committee will persuade the government to drop its support for national testing. An end to national testing would find favour with many teachers, who have long argued that Sats and performance tables encourage teaching oriented simply on how to pass tests.

John Bangs, head of education at the National Union of Teachers, said: "There are all sorts of malign effects from the current testing regime.

"There is enormous pressure on youngsters and there's a lot of training to take the tests.

"Schools themselves feel under enormous pressure because they are judged by the test results in a very crude way in the school performance tables." Liberal Democrats education spokeswoman Sarah Teather said Sats were a "stressful and bureaucratic process" and took teachers away from personalised teaching.

Shadow education secretary David Willetts said the Tories supported national examinations as a "tried and tested" method to identify standards. But he said it was important to ensure teaching was not just focused on raising a school's league table position.

The Campaign for Real Education - set up to press for higher standards - also said it continued to back tests.

The Department for Education said testing and performance tables were accountability measures "essential to extending and maintaining" improvements in standards. A spokeswoman said: "Parents need and greatly value the information they get from performance tables." (Source: BBC Website)