Press Release

Voice welcomes SATs science report

23 September 2008

Voice: the union for education professionals has welcomed a report, Perspectives on Education: Primary Science (to be published by the Wellcome Trust and researchers from Bristol and Durham Universities today) and its reported finding that science SATs are stifling children's curiosity in science and should be replaced by "moderated teacher assessment".

General Secretary Philip Parkin said: "We will study the report in detail, but we welcome its conclusion on the effects of SATs on school science. Teachers have known for years that an oppressive testing regime that encourages teaching to tests stifles creativity.

"It's time the Government listened to the professionals. The current format of 'accountability' by industrial testing benefits the government instead of informing taxpayers and parents - or educating children.

"The whole system has become too big, too expensive, too unwieldy, too inaccurate and so pointless that the opportunity should be taken to re-evaluate the whole programme and scrap it.

"We need to move education away from teaching to tests to something smaller in scale that is school-based and centred on the expert knowledge of school professionals, and which does not have the distorting effect on the curriculum that is currently so evident.

"A Welsh local authority director of education told me recently of what he saw as a transformation for the better in Year 6 following the demise of KS2 testing. It will be interesting in coming years to observe and compare standards in schools in Wales and England if SATs remain in place here."