Testing (Hansard, 30 March 1993)

§ 17. Mr. David Nicholson
To ask the Secretary of State for Education if he will make a statement on progress made in developing and implementing testing in schools.

§ Mr. Patten
Assessment and testing are integral to the national curriculum and are needed to raise standards. This year sees the third year of assessment of seven-year-olds which is already serving to improve teaching and learning, as the inspectorate has already pointed out. I expect the tests for 14-year-olds, starting this year, and the tests for 11-year-olds, starting next year, to have the same effects.

§ Mr. Nicholson
My right hon. Friend will know, through oral questions before Christmas and through certain conversations since, of my concern about the administrative burdens being caused by certain tests. Is he aware that there has been a welcome in Somerset schools for his decision not to publish the results of this year's tests and also for certain of the changes he has made in the tests? Will he do his best to ensure consistency and ease of administration in these tests?

§ Mr. Patten
I welcome any welcome from Somerset and I thank my hon. Friend for that. One of the things that the tests show is that there is, alas, still too much variation in assessment of quality across the country between Somerset and other counties. That is something we need to look at over the next year.

§ Mr. Flynn
Does the Secretary of State realise that there is grave anxiety among organisations that care for children with disabilities that the Government's concentration on tests and on league tables will lead to over-concentration of school energies on high flyers, to the detriment of children with special needs? What will he do to ensure that that does not happen?

§ Mr. Patten
I do not think that that is the case. I have been to two special schools in as many weeks and I have talked to teachers there who say, on the one hand, that they wish to help those children who have severe learning difficulties but that, on the other hand, they wish the tests to be used to try to stretch children with special educational needs to the maximum of their ability. That is right. That is what we all have to do in classrooms all over the land in every sort of school—to stretch the children as much as possible.