Headteacher leaders have called for an “immediate investigation” into reports of incorrect Sats results and missing marks.
Teaching union NAHT said today it had received “numerous complaints” from members who are yet to receive marks for some of their pupils.
And the union said that, despite raising its concerns about the “potential problems” with the Department for Education (DfE) and the Standards and Testing Agency (STA), it had been given “no clear answer” as to the scale of the issue.
NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman said that the government currently is “unable to tell us just how many children have been given incorrect marks for their Sats this year”, as well as how many papers have gone missing.
He said this was a “deeply worrying position to be in” and that as the DfE was “unable to identify the scale of the problem”, it would be difficult for schools leaders to be confident that it can be resolved.
Last week, Tes revealed that headteachers’ unions were “deeply concerned” about the reports that KS2 Sats papers had gone missing.
In an email shared with Tes at the time, the STA said Capita - which oversaw the testing and marking arrangements - would be in contact with schools “by Friday 8 July to confirm when results will be made available” for those pupils with questions awaiting final marking.
Now NAHT has been contacted by schools that have been told that some completed Sats papers have gone missing and that pupils will not be given any result. They have also been informed that some marks were assigned to the wrong students.
Mr Whiteman said it was “unacceptable” that some children will “not be given any marks at all for their work” and that reports of incorrect marks indicate “complete chaos”.
He said the “delivery of these tests” had been “beset with problems from start to finish”, adding: “We need an immediate investigation into what has gone wrong and the government must take urgent action to fix it.”
Last week, schools struggled to access their results as the primary assessment gateway - outsourced to Capita by the DfE - crashed, which resulted in some schools waiting hours to access scores.
Mr Whiteman concluded: “If schools are to be 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.”
Last week, a poll by Teacher Tapp suggested that 20 per cent of primary teachers had received KS2 Sats papers with marks missing. NAHT has since raised further concerns with the STA about marks being incorrect as well.
Tes previously revealed that NAHT had called for a “thorough review” of this year’s Sats results to highlight concerns about the marking of papers by Capita.
A Department for Education spokesperson said that while 3.8 million test scripts had been processed, they were aware that ”a number of scripts were not included when results were made available last week”.
The spokesperson said that the DfE wrote to “all schools affected in advance”.
“We recognise this will be frustrating for those schools. Our delivery partner, Capita, is investigating all cases of missing results and working to reduce the number as far as possible, while keeping schools up to do date. We expect to make significant progress on this matter this week.”
A Capita spokesperson said that over the testing period, the company collected scanned and marked 3.8 million test scripts for “over 16,000 schools on behalf of STA”.
The spokesperson said that a “small number of schools have scripts missing and that the scripts “could be missing for a range of reasons, including that scripts were returned after the marking period, lost during processing, or because a pupil may not have sat a test”.
“We understand that this is frustrating for the affected schools and we apologise to them for any errors we have made. We are working with them to understand the reasons why a pupil may be showing as missing and any appropriate next steps to resolve the situation.”
