Maths exam in progress
(Picture: PA Archive)School leaders have called for an immediate investigation into this year’s SATs results after some children received the wrong marks or no results at all.
Teachers warned the “chaos” surrounding this year’s end-of-primary school tests could shake public confidence in the exams.
The NAHT teaching union has received “numerous” complaints from headteachers saying they have not received marks for some pupils, while other pupils have been wrongly assigned another child’s marks, a spokeswoman said.
The union has warned the Department for Education and the Standards and Testing Agency about the complaints and is now demanding a full investigation.
NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman said: “As things stand, the government is unable to tell us just how many children have been given incorrect marks for their SATs this year, and how many papers have gone missing.
“This is a deeply worrying position to be in – if the government is unable to identify the scale of the problem, how can leaders have confidence that they will be able to fix it?”
SATs results were released on July 5 and showed the number of children passing writing and maths dropped since the start of the pandemic, but reading levels improved.
Year Six pupils took the exams this summer for the first time since 2019, despite protests from teachers who said it was unfair to hold them amid ongoing Covid disruption.
The government insisted it was important for assessments to go ahead to assess the impact of the pandemic, and said results will not be published in league tables.
Headteachers faced delays trying to access the results after the Primary Assessment Gateway website crashed.
Mr Whiteman said: “The delivery of these tests has been beset with problems from start to finish. We need an immediate investigation into what has gone wrong, and the government must take urgent action to fix it.”
He added: “It is unacceptable for the answer to the government’s failed SATs delivery to be for children not to be given any marks at all for their work. Parents will understandably be outraged by that.
“And for schools to then find, on closer investigation, that some of the marks they have been given are incorrect, hints at complete chaos. It should not be up to schools to have to spend hours double checking everything they’ve been told.”
Last week, a poll by Teacher Tapp suggested that 20 per cent of primary teachers had Year Six SATs papers with marks missing.
Mr Whiteman said: “If schools are obliged to spend the time implementing these tests, the least parents and children should be able to expect is a system that operates well. For a government that prides itself on efficient delivery, this is the latest in a long line of failures and mismanagements when it comes to exams and assessments, and it simply isn’t good enough.
“School staff all play their part, take it seriously and do exactly what is expected – and the penalties for mistakes are severe. We should be able to expect the same standards from government.
“This needs to be put right urgently, and the government needs to listen to school leaders on what has gone wrong so that it does not happen again.”
Department for Education figures show 59 per cent of 11 year olds met the expected standards in all three subjects – reading, writing and maths- this year, compared with 65 per cent before the pandemic.
Results for the grammar, punctuation and spelling test also dropped, as did those for science exams.
Reading results improved, with the number of children reaching the expected level increasing from 73 per cent in 2019 to 74 per cent in 2022, despite the disruption of Covid.
