6 CONCLUSION
251. We have been clear that the principle of national
testing is sound. However, the central message of our Report has
been that national testing can be used in inappropriate ways and
that this may lead to damaging consequences for the education
system and, most particularly, for children. National testing
in England is used for a wide range of purposes, including assessment
of pupil attainment, teacher and school accountability and national
monitoring. Increasingly, claims are being made that these same
tests are also suitable for formative and diagnostic purposes
and the new single-level tests are being developed explicitly
with this aim. The evidence we have received has been quite clear:
a single set of tests cannot validly achieve all of these purposes
simultaneously. The purposes of testing must be prioritised and
an assessment must be made to establish the extent to which the
tests meet the requirements of validity and reliability for each
of the identified purposes. This information should then be put
in the public domain to give context to the decisions which are
made on the basis of published test results and associated statistics.
252. The assumption that the current testing system
is capable of meeting validly a wide range of different purposes
has distorted the education of some children, which may leave
them unprepared for higher education and employment. We consider
that the over-emphasis on the importance of national tests, which
address only a limited part of the National Curriculum and a limited
range of children's skills and knowledge, has resulted in a situation
in which many teachers feel compelled to focus unduly on those
aspects of the curriculum most likely to be tested and on those
students most likely to reach the targets specified by the Government.
It is possible to achieve excellent test results by teaching the
whole curriculum in a balanced and creative manner, without teaching
to the test, but this requires considerable confidence on the
part of teachers and schools. In the drive towards more demonstrable
reliability in results, teacher assessment and the wider skills
of the teaching profession have been undervalued.
253. When the results of national tests are published
in the form of performance tables, parents and others are presented
with a limited view of a school's activities. We consider that
the Government should reform the performance tables to include
a wider range of measures of school performance, including results
from the most recent Ofsted report, and that this information
should be presented in a more accessible manner.
254. As the introduction of the new Diplomas approaches,
evidence suggests that teachers feel unprepared for the new qualifications
and there is anxiety about the limited amount of training they
are due to receive. We wonder how schools will collaborate to
provide the new curriculum in the competitive environment created
by the imperative to show well in performance tables. Additional
problems may arise in relation to the transportation of children
between different schools, especially in rural areas; and in relation
to the practicalities of child protection checks on businesses
working with Diploma students. We look forward to receiving from
the Government greater clarity on the future direction of Diplomas.
255. In our view, a brighter future for our education
system as a whole lies in a recognition of the professional competence
of teachers. The Government should accord a much greater prominence
to teacher assessment, which is capable of covering the full curriculum
and the full range of children's knowledge, skills and competences
in a way which can never be achieved by a written, externally-marked
test. In any reform of the testing system, priority should explicitly
be accorded to the purpose of promoting the learning of children.
We have been particularly struck by the support in the evidence
for the techniques of Assessment for Learning in this respect.
Extensive training and ongoing professional support for teachers
would be necessary for the success of such a strategy, including
the development of a central bank of diagnostic and formative
teaching materials which can be administered informally by teachers
in classrooms.
256. We emphasise, however, that assessment instruments
designed to promote personalised pupil learning, through Assessment
for Learning techniques for example, should not be made a part
of the accountability regime. This is where we take issue with
the single-level tests. The principle of testing when ready may
have some merit but, once that system is used for the purposes
of school accountability, the focus on effective pupil learning
is lost as schools succumb to the imperatives of accountability
through targets and performance tables. Looked at from the other
direction, tests designed to prioritise the purposes of school
accountability and national monitoring cannot simultaneously be
suitable for the promotion of personalised pupil learning except
at a very shallow level. Such tests cannot possibly attend to
the level of detail necessary for planning a pupil's progress
through the curriculum on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
257. We believe that the Government's reforms of
the testing system must take account of these concerns if children
are to leave school as rounded, knowledgeable, capable individuals
ready to progress to further and higher education and contribute
effectively to working life.
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