Around three-quarters of calls made to the primary assessment helpline went unanswered last year, a government report has revealed.
Of the 42,871 calls made to the national curriculum assessment (NCA) helpline in the 2022-23 academic year, only 27 per cent were answered, the latest Standards and Testing Agency (STA) annual report and accounts states.
Less than half of these calls (42 per cent) were answered within 15 seconds, despite an STA target for this to happen 90 per cent of the time.
Half of emails sent to the NCA helpline were resolved within five working days.
The STA, an agency of the Department for Education, is responsible for statutory tests and assessments for pupils in key stages 1 and 2, and for the Reception baseline assessment (RBA).
It is measured against a key performance indicator on whether enquiries to its helpline are “resolved at first contact”.
Call targets ‘skewed’ by ‘extreme’ week
The STA said that its helpline service targets are “skewed by one week of extreme call volumes during test week”, and that “for the majority of the year, the KPIs are met”.
The testing agency said that it has made “extra effort to drive down call volumes” and “improve training and recruitment of the temporary agents that are needed over this period”.
Further impact on the helpline included “challenges with recruitment and retention of Capita staff to operate the helpline”, the report added.
The STA has also redeployed staff as “virtual floor walkers” to support temporary agents working on the helpline, it said.
During Sats week in 2022, more than three in five calls went unanswered.
The latest report comes after outsourcing firm Capita, which has been running the Year 6 tests since 2018, lost its bid to exam board Pearson to run the exams from 2025-26.
Here are five other findings from the testing agency’s annual report.
1. STA test development not ‘transparent’ enough
Following controversy over the 2023 Sats reading paper, the STA has admitted that “our test development and standards maintenance processes were not as transparent as they should be”.
Last year, leaders warned that the reading paper left even the most able pupils “broken” and in tears.
However, a review of the test found “no evidence” that the reading paper failed to meet its purpose - but that lower-attaining pupils were likely to have found the test more difficult than previous tests since 2016.
“While there was some concern initially about the content and difficulty of the reading test, this reduced considerably once the test, its mark scheme and the scaled score tables were published,” the STA said in its latest report.
It added that it has been working to “increase public confidence”.
The STA has since held “teach-ins” and said that it will continue to do so to “increase the understanding of test constructions”.
2. ‘Key lessons’ learned by Capita
During the 2023 test cycle, Capita undertook a “programme of remediation” to address key lessons learned from 2022.
The STA said this led to “much shorter wait times for support via the helpline”, a “significantly reduced volume of missing scripts” and faster access to results for schools.
However, Capita still had to delay the marking of Year 6 Sats papers by a week last year owing to “technical issues”.
3. Capita charged £500K for delay
The supplier is required to provide 99.9 per cent of “accurate item-level data”, showing how pupils performed in each part of a question in the tests.
As Capita did not meet this key milestone by the deadline in 2023, a “delay credit” of £581,842.87 was applied by the STA.
However, the STA added that “sufficient volumes of data were provided for STA, after a short delay, to confidently maintain the standard in each subject”.
The reporting of this process was observed by Ofqual with no concerns raised, the report said.
4. Digital RBA trialled in schools
The STA said that it has been carrying out work to develop a more digital version of the Reception baseline test (RBA), which includes trialling questions in 165 schools and testing functionality.
The RBA is a statutory test administered by schools to Reception pupils in their first six weeks of school. The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) is responsible for delivering these tests.
The testing agency previously said that the RBA would be carried out digitally from September 2024, but earlier this year confirmed that it has been delayed until September 2025.
Owing to delays in the STA’s “digital transformation programme” and its decision to delay the digital RBA, the STA saw an underspend of 21.4 per cent in its capital budget.
“However, in the last quarter of 2023-24, planned work has commenced - therefore, we do not expect to be in a similar position at the end of 2024-25,” the report added.
The majority of schools expected to participate in the RBA have carried out the tests for the 2023-24 school year, the report confirmed.
Most of the remaining “non-engaging” schools are special schools, the report said, adding that the STA and NFER are working to “improve communications with these schools to ensure that they undertake required action to disapply relevant pupils”.
5. Print supplier in administration
Capita’s print supplier, Communisis, went into administration in December 2023, meaning that Capita had to onboard a new print supplier “at pace”.
Following the change of supplier, the report said that there is an “increased risk to the quality of the materials” and a “risk of failure to meet the printing schedule”.
The STA monitored printing closely to ensure that it remained “on track” for the 2024 testing series.
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