Commenting on the Association of Teachers and Lecturers’ (ATL)
response to the Government consultations - Primary
Assessment in England and the Rochford Review
recommendations, Dr Mary Bousted,
general secretary of ATL said:
“While the primary assessment consultation does include some
positive proposals, we remain disappointed by the Government’s
total failure to address the impact of toxic high-stakes
accountability on our primary schools.
“We are pleased the Government is committed to improving writing
assessment at key stages 1 and 2, as the current system is
clearly broken and has had a negative impact on the teaching of
writing in the last two years. Too many children have had their
last year at primary school blighted by this flawed assessment
and almost 50% of children were labelled as failures last year in
their SATs, leaving them despondent and stressed.
“ATL remains opposed to the introduction of an experimental
reception baseline assessment and unnecessary times table test.
At a time when our schools are struggling to make ends meet, and
teachers are being shouldered with unacceptable levels of
workload, more tests cannot be the answer.
“ATL believes that the time has come to look again at how we
measure schools. The current system does not
work. We want to work with the Government to
develop a fair system that helps every child achieve their
potential, while providing worthwhile information to parents and
the Government. The current accountability system is neither fair
for children, nor useful for parents. ATL believes we can and
must do better and we hope the DfE take on board the
concerns of our members.”
