division_name: Sats Results
motion: <p class="indent" pid="b226.0/2" pwmotiontext="yes">That this House believes that every child deserves an excellent education which enables them to grow and thrive; notes that the Government has published figures showing that a lower proportion of children were meeting the expected standard at the end of Key Stage 2 overall in 2016 than in 2015; further notes that, as a result, in 2016 47 percent of children will be told that they have not reached the expected standard in at least one of their SATs papers; regrets that the Secretary of State for Education has pushed ahead with chaotic and confusing reforms which mean that thousands of children will be unnecessarily labelled as failures, and that the Secretary of State is steadily losing the confidence of teachers; and calls on the Government urgently to review primary assessment and the 2016 SATs results and to clarify that these will not be used for measuring and judging school performance.</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b227.0/6" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;Given the changes to SATs this year, and the mistakes we&#8217;ve seen, it is hard see how valuable this data will be to parents who want to understand how well a school is performing year on year or compared to other schools. But the government does love a league table, regardless of how accurate it may be.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b228.1/4" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;these tests only measure a little bit of you and your abilities&#8230;Ben&#8230;is made up of many other skills and talents that we at Lansbury Bridge see and measure in other ways&#8230;These tests do not measure&#8230;Your artistic talents&#8230;Your ability to work in a team&#8230;Your growing independence&#8230;Your kindness&#8230;Your ability to express your opinion&#8230;Your abilities in sport&#8230;Your ability to make and keep friends&#8230;Your ability to discuss and evaluate your own progress&#8230;Your design and building talents&#8230;Your musical ability&#8221;.</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b228.1/6" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;we are so pleased that all of these different talents and abilities make you the special person you are and these are all of the things we measure to reassure us that you are always making progress and continuing to develop as a lovely bright young man. Well done Ben, we are very proud of you.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b229.1/4" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;My son is tired, stressed and paranoid that he&#8217;s going to fail&#8212;I can&#8217;t wait for this week to be over.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b229.1/6" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;My son hardly slept on Sunday night and was a nervous wreck on Monday morning, despite us telling him that these tests are not the be-all and end-all. It&#8217;s way too much pressure at 11.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b234.3/3" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;The only thing people will remember about the tests from 2016 was that they were one big mess! Your result will not stop you achieving really well at high school and going on to be a fabulous success in the future. Put whatever you got to the back of your mind and move on!&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b234.3/5" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;Fairness is always vitally important in whatever we do in life. Unfortunately, these tests were really not fair.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b234.3/7" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;They were much harder than usual and this meant that you didn&#8217;t get the chance to show how much you have learned. There has been lots in the news about this in the past week and schools all over the country are feeling the same&#8230;I think we all feel a bit let down.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b234.3/9" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;You feel let down because you worked so hard and maybe you didn&#8217;t quite get what you deserved. Your teachers feel the same because they have tried everything in their power to help you achieve and they are frustrated because it hasn&#8217;t quite turned out as they would have wanted.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b234.3/11" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;a few test scores mean very little, particularly when the test was unfair anyway.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b235.1/2" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;We don&#8217;t need tests to tell us how great you all are.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b241.0/6" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;So much rides on SATs that the real purpose of education is lost&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b246.0/9" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;serious mistakes in the planning and implementation of tests this year&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b246.0/11" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;with the delays and confusion in guideline materials.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b246.0/14" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;no intelligence on the rate of improvement of teaching and learning.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b246.0/16" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;Pupils, teachers and parents and all involved in schools should be proud of the work they have put in to implement&#8221;&#8212;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b246.0/18" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;in what has been a very short timetable.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b246.0/20" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;The aim to raise standards has resulted in a new way to measure performance so that no comparative judgments can be made&#8230;This means we do not know from the data alone whether the Government has done a good job or a bad job and whether the test designers and score-scalers have done a good job or a bad job.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b246.0/24" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;By rushing ahead with the policy without properly involving professionals or parents, the Government failed to spot the fundamental flaw in the design, which was that the test that they had developed were insufficiently comparable. As a result, they were forced to abandon their approach to baseline test entirely.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b246.0/26" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;There has been a constant stream of chop and change in primary assessment under this Government. Since September, the Department for Education has updated or clarified on average at least one primary school assessment resource every other working day.&#8221;&#8212;[Official Report, <phrase class="date" code="2016-05-10">10 May</phrase> 2016; Vol. 609, c. 554.]</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b246.0/30" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;there is something wrong in the assessment process&#8221;,</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b246.0/32" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;and carry out what is effectively damage limitation.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="italic" pid="b252.0/6" pwmotiontext="yes">The House divided:</p>
  
  <p pid="b252.0/7" pwmotiontext="yes">Ayes 178, Noes 278.</p>