Minister attacked over tests 'mess'
Tuesday, 19 February 2008
Print
Email
Senior Labour figures have rounded on the Government's testing system, claiming it was robbing children of a creative education and had led to many schools teaching "to the test".
Barry Sheerman, chairman of the Commons Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families, told MPs: "It all seems to be in a bit of a mess." He was one of several Labour MPs on the committee who criticised the Government's testing regime in frank exchanges with the Schools minister Jim Knight.
It was the MPs' first opportunity to question the minister directly after a report from a review of primary education by Professor Robin Alexander had claimed English primary school pupils were the most over-burdened and over-tested in the Western world.
Mr Sheerman said the testing system seemed to "squeeze out the creativity, the depth and the imagination from the curriculum".
However, Mr Knight said he thought any link between rigid testing and disaffection was "tenuous". He said tests for 11-year-olds might follow the example of those for seven-year-olds, where teachers decide when pupils are ready to sit them.
