The return of primary school performance tables for key stage 2 Sats is “wrong” and should be delayed to allow schools to manage the post-Covid recovery of pupils without high-stakes accountability “looming over them”, primary leaders have warned.
And the decision to bring back primary school league tables this year has been described as “disappointing” and a sign the government thinks it can “flip the switch and pretend Covid never happened”, a headteachers’ leader told Tes.
The warnings come as campaign group More Than A Score today publishes the results of its survey showing that just 3 per cent of headteachers and senior leaders believe Year 6 Sats results are the best measure of high standards in primary schools.
KS 2 Sats test results are due to be published this year for the first time since before the pandemic in 2019, after the tests were cancelled in 2020 and 2021.
Sats took place last year but were not required to be published within school performance league tables online.
Last year, the proportion of pupils meeting the expected standard in all three areas of reading, writing and maths at age 11 fell to 59 per cent, far below the 2019 figure of 65 per cent, according to Department for Education data.
James Bowen, director of policy at school leaders’ union NAHT, said it was “wrong to go back to performance tables” and “disappointing” that the government had decided to “flip the switch and pretend” Covid never happened.
Meanwhile, Tiffnie Harris, the Association of School and College Leaders’ primary and data specialist, said that performance tables should not be published this year “given the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on different schools and the continuing disparity in attendance rates”.
“To avoid the possibility of unfair comparisons being made, it would have been simpler to continue the suspension and let school leaders get on with managing their schools’ post-Covid recovery without performance tables looming over them,” she said.
Rob Carpenter, chief executive of Inspire Partnership Trust, told Tes that the return of league tables was coming at a time when “the accountability pressures on schools have never been higher”.
“Once again we’re reducing the work of schools to a performance table and to an accountability measure that‘s quite complex,” Mr Carpenter said.
The ongoing workforce challenges, including the recent teacher strikes, had an uneven impact on schools and attendance rates, he said.
“This piles pressure back on to headteachers at a time where the recruitment and retention of senior leaders in schools is our biggest challenge, at a time when we’re seeing leadership workload at its highest levels post pandemic.
“What we should be doing is focusing all our energies on supporting teachers and leaders, and working together to raise standards and actually taking away some of this nonsense around heavy-handed high-stakes accountability,” he added.
Gary Wilkie, chief executive of the Learning in Harmony Multi-academy Trust, is also concerned about the retention of Year 6 teachers.
He said for some teachers of this cohort, performance tables are “an anxiety of old”, but others who have started teaching Year 6 in the past few years had not previously experienced the pressure and were now questioning if they want to be teaching in a performance year.
“There’s a risk that its going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for some,” Mr Wilkie added.
Michael Tidd, headteacher at East Preston Junior School in West Sussex, said he is “generally pretty relaxed about performance tables” but he thinks it is “odd” to return to publishing data amid a “maelstrom of change”.
Comparative performance will not be possible to assess, as 2024 and 2025 KS2 tests will have no key stage 1 baseline to look back on owing to Covid, he said.
“Some schools with a weak attaining cohort - particularly one that’s been harshly affected by Covid - could have that set of results ‘on their record’ for years,” he said.
Broader measure of school performance
Meanwhile a survey of 1,490 school leaders - commissioned by More Than A Score and carried out by Teacher Tapp - found more than three-quarters (76 per cent) of those surveyed agreed that pupils may have reached the necessary standards for maths and English needed to start secondary school but did not meet the “expected standard” in Sats.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the survey provides “yet more evidence that we need a broader measure of school performance than Sats”.
“The current system puts too much weight on a set of tests in English and maths taken at the end of primary school. Literacy and numeracy attainment are obviously of huge importance but there is so much more to schools than a narrow set of data.
“We are not calling for Sats to be scrapped but merely for reform which places them in the context of a broader set of information, and that gives parents a fuller picture of what a school offers and more importance to other parts of the rich curriculum of primary schools.
“Teachers and leaders are working very hard to provide children with a broad curriculum and prepare them for secondary education, but this is not reflected in the way that schools are currently measured.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We know that the pandemic had a huge impact on pupils learning. That’s why we’ve invested nearly £5 billion in education recovery initiatives, through which nearly three million tutoring courses have started.
“Key stage 2 assessments have a vital role to play in helping schools understand pupils’ progress and identify those who may have fallen behind, so they can be provided with extra support if needed.
“We trust schools to administer primary assessments in the appropriate way and to provide support to children where required, and while we know the pandemic had an impact on the mental health and wellbeing of young people, there is little evidence suggesting changes in pupil wellbeing around the time of KS2 tests.”
