Leading article: A test that deserved to fail

You could, if you were of a cynical cast of mind, argue that the Government has exploited the big news of the banking rescue to "bury" a slew of reversals in other areas. These would include the abandonment of the anti-terrorist measures discussed in another of today's leading articles, and the abolition – announced out of the blue by the Children's Secretary, Ed Balls, yesterday – of national tests for 14-year-olds. Political opportunism cannot be excluded. But that does not mean that the decision taken on testing was not the right one.

National testing has a place, and an important one, in the schools system of England and Wales. It offers parents and ministers a gauge of how children, teachers and schools are performing against a national standard – information that was not available, or at least not openly and systematically, before. Of course, testing has its downside, too. There is substance in charges that too many teachers "teach to the test"; that pupils learn less about reading and writing than how to pass tests; and that schools (and ministers) have mastered the finer arts of statistical manipulation to present themselves in the best light.

But the most compelling criticism, from parents and teachers, was always that pupils were over-tested. Objections to national tests for seven- year-olds (key stage 1) were addressed by making the timing flexible and having the tests marked in school by teachers. Now, in a move surely precipitated by this summer's marking shambles, tests for 14-year-olds have been summarily abolished. This was a sensible move, if overdue. With GCSEs, A-levels and now the new diplomas, pupils could face national tests of some kind in four out of five consecutive years; key stage 2 testing was a natural candidate for the chop. Schools will now be judged by their results in GCSEs and the rest, augmented by a standardised national report card – which should suffice.

This leaves the SATs taken by 11-year-olds as the only externally set and marked tests pupils take before GCSEs. That we now have a system that looks remarkably like the one that preceded the decade-long preoccupation with testing will leave many parents asking whether a similar result – improved accountability – might not have been achieved with less pain.

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