Union leaders have said that it is “beyond belief” that primary schools have again experienced delays in being able to access their pupils’ Sats results this year.
The Primary Assessment Gateway (PAG), through which headteachers can access their school’s key stage 2 Sats results, was meant to be accessible from 7.30am today.
But primary headteachers reported being unable to get onto the site this morning despite the Standards and Testing Agency saying it was “confident” the issue would not recur this year.
Today’s delays came after many primary school headteachers and leaders reported they were unable to see their pupils’ results for a period of time last year.
Capita, which has a contract worth just over £100 million for managing the marking of Sats, said the PAG system was operational and urged teachers to be patient.
Sarah Hannafin, head of policy at the NAHT school leaders’ union, said: “It’s beyond belief that for the second successive year, schools have had issues logging into the PAG system, which they use to access results.
“We were assured that changes had been made so there would not be a repeat this time around.”
But Ms Hannafin said that from 7.30am this morning, “many schools had similar problems”.
She added: “The government has made Sats extremely high stakes for schools, so it should come as no surprise that demand to access the system on the morning results are released is high.
“School leaders are expected to get things right, adhering to deadlines for completing tasks and submitting data; the same expectations must be met by the government.”
Michael Tidd, headteacher at East Preston Junior School in West Sussex, said that the problems accessing Sats results this morning will be “the straw on the camel’s back” for some leaders.
He said: “It is becoming something of a running joke among headteachers that the system will collapse despite the Department for Education claiming that everything will work better each year.
“But it’s not a joke - these results come with such high stakes for schools that chaos like that will affect some teachers’ and leaders’ health; for others, it will be a straw on the camel’s back - and once again it shows a complete lack of respect for the profession at a time when the department is struggling to recruit and retain teachers as it is.”
One primary headteacher tweeted this morning that it was “easier to get Taylor Swift tickets yesterday than access KS2 results”.
Mr Tidd also tweeted the problems he was having with the PAG, experiencing gateway timeouts and messages about planned maintenance.
Meanwhile, Adamsrill Primary School tweeted that the gateway was down and told parents it could not retrieve the school’s results.
Last year’s Sats were plagued by a series of major problems around the marking and moderation process, which led to concerns about mark accuracy.
A Capita spokesperson said: “The PAG system is operational, just busy, and we urge teachers to be patient.
“Between 07.30am and 9.00am we have had 25,303 successful downloads from 8,763 organisations.”
