Task Group on Assessment and Testing (Hansard, 19 April 1988)

§ 6. Ms. Armstrong
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science when he expects the Task Group on Assessment and Testing to publish its final report; and if he will make a statement.

§ 15. Mr. Michael
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science when he expects the Task Group on Assessment and Testing to publish its final report; and if he will make a statement.

§ Mr. Kenneth Baker
My Department has just received the further advice I requested from the task group, and expect to publish it in due course, when I have completed my consideration of it.

§ Ms. Armstrong
Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to clear up a confusion? Is it the Government's view that testing is formative and diagnostic, as the Black report recommends, or is it the Government's view that it is summative, as the Prime Minister suggests?

§ Mr. Baker
If the hon. Lady reads the Black report, she will note that in some of its paragraphs it is quite scathing about the misuse of diagnostic testing. The very fact that the Black report also recognises that the results of assessment and testing, particularly testing, should be published means that that is a summative use of the results of testing and assessment.

§ Mr. Michael
Is not the report of the task force at variance with the crude form of measurement favoured by the Prime Minister? Does the Secretary of State agree with the comments made by Lord Joseph in the other place, and will he reassure us that he will not create a testing industry, which would divert resources from the important task of education?

§ Mr. Baker
If we have a national curriculum and attainment targets at seven, 11, 14 and 16, which is the system which we shall have, and which has received support from both sides of the House, we shall have to assess and test the children. This is what teachers need to do, what pupils want, and what parents want to know. They want to know the answer to the question, "How is my child doing at a particular age against national criteria?" That is what we shall provide.

§ Mr. Latham
I warmly welcome the practical, commonsense approach of the Black report, but will my right hon. Friend confirm that it remains his view and that of his Ministers that the results of any testing at seven should be known only to the parents, the head and the class teacher?

§ Mr. Baker
The Black report made it clear that there should be assessment and testing at seven, but that it would be unfair to the school and the child to publish those results. I have already expressed my considerable sympathy with that approach. Seven is too early an age at which to make judgments, because children come in at different ages and have had different levels of experience of teaching.

§ Mr. Sackville
Are not some of those teachers who criticise assessment on the grounds that it will expose children of ethnic backgrounds to unfair competition failing to help those children, and even possibly damaging their future prospects?

§ Mr. Baker
I agree with my hon. Friend. I have been impressed by the number of parents of ethnic children who are insistent that their children are taught the basics and should know exactly where they stand. I look upon that as a reinforcement of basic standards in our schools.

§ Mr. Straw
The Secretary of State will recall that in the private letter which the Prime Minister's private secretary sent his private secretary in January, the Prime Minister expressed great concern about the "very large cost" of implementing the Black report. Has the Secretary of State 670 yet reached any views about the total costs of testing? If so, what are they? Do the answers on testing that he has given this afternoon have the support of the Prime Minister?

§ Mr. Baker
I am quite sure that they do—[Interruption.] I might confirm it by letter. The hon. Gentleman knows well that I, too, expressed anxiety in Committee about the complexity of an assessment and testing scheme. It must not be so complex that it bears down on the administration of the school. I am also concerned about the cost. As I have told the hon. Gentleman, we have received further documents from Professor Black's group. We asked him particularly to address these points. I shall publish those documents in due course.