State of Education Report 2017 state-of-education-booklet-Final-WEB | Page 20

Reformed national assessments: what do school
leaders think?
School leaders are calling for additional resources and mark schemes
for the new GCSEs, in particular for those subjects that are being
taught under the new curriculum from September 2016. One school
School leaders are resoundingly critical of the current national leader drew attention to the ultimate impact of such frustrations
assessment system, with more than three-quarters saying they do not in the system, telling us she “feels so sorry” for her current year 11
have confidence in it at both primary and secondary level (77% and students who “have so many questions to which we just don’t have
76% respectively). the answers”.
In almost half (47%) of primary schools, leaders do not feel they
More than three-quarters (77%) of school
leaders do not have confidence in the
current national assessment system
have adequate information to ensure pupils are well-prepared to sit
this year’s KS2 assessments; just two in 10 (22%) leaders say they do
have enough information. According to one school leader, there is
“too little information, too late”. This dissatisfaction follows last year’s
delays to guidance materials and leaked test papers, which led to
questions over the validity of SATs data 21 for the first cohort of pupils
to be taught the new KS2 curriculum.
?
Almost half (47%) of primary leaders do not feel
they have adequate information to ensure pupils
are well prepared to sit this year’s KS2 assessments
Concern over a lack of information is similarly apparent at KS4,
with more than five in 10 (55%) school leaders feeling unable to
adequately prepare pupils for GCSEs this summer and only one in
10 (12%) feeling sufficiently equipped. While the government has
Just over one in 10 (12%) secondary leaders feels
sufficiently equipped with information to prepare
pupils sitting GCSEs this year
published subject content for English language, English literature
and mathematics, first taught in September 2015, comments such
as “teachers are having to work in the dark, and second-guess the
examiners” appear often in the replies to our survey.
STATE OF EDUCATION 2017 | WWW.STATEOFED.THEKEYSUPPORT.COM
“There are insufficient resources… Teachers are
having to work in the dark, and second-guess
the examiners.” School leader
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