Can you pass the Government’s new controversial Key Stage 2 English grammar, punctuation and spelling test?

Prominent writer pens open letter to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, asking whether the people who devised the new test are ‘really interested in writing’

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The Government’s new Key Stage 2 English grammar, punctuation and spelling test is continuing to spark much debate and controversy, with a prominent author hitting out at next year’s new test.

Writing an open letter to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan in The Guardian, children’s novelist and poet Michael Rosen described it as suffering from ‘a severe case of terminology-itis’, adding how some of the questions are based on ‘stacked-up levels of abstraction’ as well as trick questions.

Designed to give teachers an indication of how the new curriculum will be assessed from 2016, the Government has released sample test papers which, the Standards and Testing Agency says, reflects areas of the curriculum that have ‘changed’, acknowledging how questions may be ‘unfamiliar or more challenging’.

Reflecting on whether the people who devised the test are ‘really interested in writing’ Rosen wrote: “I doubt it.”

He also hit out at the terminology of the test’s name, referring to it as ‘problematic’, arguing how some questions are not about spelling, punctuation or grammar - but rather to do with ‘vocabulary’.

See the complete sample test here, with the accompanying answers here