Michael Gove has announced plans to reform the system of school testing by ending the practice of eleven-year-olds taking Sats at the end of primary school.
The Shadow Children’s Secretary warned that testing at the end of primary school "completely narrows teaching" and stressed that last year the system "went into meltdown".
He instead proposed that pupils should sit national tests in the first year of secondary school, marked by their teachers:
“Our principle aim is to have a system of testing that accurately measures children and school performance. We believe that we should move these tests to secondary school.”
Michael said the best comprehensive schools "do not completely trust Sats tests" and so carry out their own tests anyway.
He stressed, "If the very best secondary schools are running their own tests and the primary school tests are becoming increasingly discredited, why don't we move to one simple, unified system of testing at the beginning of secondary school?"