§ Mr. HardyTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science (1) what is his estimate of the cost of preparation for the inclusion in the national curriculum of those subjects which he has recently removed from this arrangement as far as primary schools are concerned;
(2) what is his estimate of the total number of man hours which have been devoted by officials of his Department, by local authority officers and by teachers, to the preparation for inclusion in the national curriculum of those subjects which have now been removed from this arrangement.
§ Mrs. RumboldNo core or foundation subject has been removed from the national curriculum. My right hon. Friend did, however, announce in a published letter to the chairman of the School Examinations and Assessment Council on 9 April that the arrangements for statutorily assessing seven-year-olds in technology, history and geography should be kept simple and that, accordingly, he and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales had reached the provisional conclusion that it would be right not to impose a statutory requirement to administer standard assessment tasks (SATs) to seven-year-olds in these subjects. Prior to that announcement, no work involving schools or LEAs had been undertaken on the development of SATs in these subjects for seven-year-olds. The preparatory work undertaken by schools and LEAs to date has mainly been directed towards the first statutory assessments of seven-year-olds in the core subjects of English, mathematics and science in 1991. My right hon. Friend confirmed in his letter to SEAC that these assessments would be based on a combination of teacher assessment and statutory SATs.