Tory peer condemns school tests 'monster': Protest by teachers fuels education policy split

TEACHERS and the Government have created a national curriculum testing monster of 'byzantine complexity' which is close to collapse, Lord Skidelsky, a Conservative peer, said yesterday.

He told a conference organised by the Centre for Policy Studies, a right-wing pressure group, that a crucial plank of the Government's standard-raising policy will collapse if a sizeable proportion of teachers join the tests boycott which began this week. The Government relies on teachers to administer the tests and the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers' boycott is in protest against the increased workload.

Lord Skidelsky said that ministers talked about returning to pencil-and-paper tests but 'these visions are totally inconsistent with the philosophy of testing which dominates the national curriculum', and had led to a system inherently complicated, bureaucratic and time-consuming.

His remarks revive an argument which began in 1988 when the Government accepted a report from Professor Paul Black saying that children should be tested at 7, 11, 14 and 16 and placed on levels from 1 (bottom) to 10 (top). Margaret Thatcher, then prime minister, wanted a simpler system.

Lord Skidelsky, a member of the School Examinations and Assessment Council, said this 'Utopian' system endorsed by successive secretaries of state had led to insoluble problems in setting tests and assessing results. 'Hundreds of thousands if not millions of pounds are being spent in trying to overcome these problems.'

Professor Black had failed to resolve the clash between a system to diagnose children's weaknesses, favoured by teachers, and one which measured schools' and teachers' performance, demanded by ministers. 'The result has been a fudge.'

Earlier, John Patten, Secretary of State for Education, promised to review and streamline the tests. 'We must constantly be on the look-out for ways of improving the manageability of tests. That depends on finding more economical ways of testing whether pupils have mastered the targets . . .' He said that testing and assessment were part of the law of the land - 'a fundamental part of teachers' professional and contractual duty'. One pressure group and several local authorities are considering action against the NASUWT. Professor Black, of King's College, London, told the conference that those who wanted to change the 10 levels must suggest an alternative: teachers needed a model of pupil progress. He also defended the emphasis his report placed on teacher assessment rather than external tests.

Research showed that teacher assessment was very reliable and preliminary work on last year's national curriculum maths tests for 14-year-olds suggested that a substantial proportion of pupils might be wrongly marked in timed written tests. 'The public has the right to information about pupil achievement. They also have the right to know what proportion of pupils will be misplaced in timed, written, external tests.'

Lord Griffiths, chairman of the School Examinations and Assessment Council, who advised Margaret Thatcher five years ago that the original testing system was unworkable, said that he was as opposed to bureaucracy as anyone, 'but once you go down the road of a national curriculum there is no way of avoiding the detail'. He feared that if someone attempted to reverse the testing juggernaut there would be chaos in classrooms.