Assessment and Testing (Report) (Hansard, 12 January 1988)

§ Mr. Kenneth Baker

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales and I are publishing today the report of the task group on assessment and testing. Copies are being placed in the Library of the House, made available to members of the Committee on the Education Reform Bill, and are available on request from my Department. A shorter version is being prepared for distribution to schools within the next few weeks. I am very grateful to the task group's chairman, Professor Paul Black, and his fellow members for the speed and thoroughness with which they have discharged their task. Their report will make an important contribution to the development of arrangements to underpin the national curriculum in schools, provided for in the Education Reform Bill now before Parliament.

The report recommends a national assessment system, including testing, which incorporates the main features of the Government's proposals. It provides for assessment related to clear objectives at ages 7, 11, 14 and 16 which takes account of differences in ability and maturity; for a balanced mixture of national testing and other assessment by teachers during the course of their work, and for reporting on pupils' attainments in ways which are comprehensible and helpful and which recognise the sensitivities of publishing information about the results of assessment. It lays emphasis on formative assessment of a child's positive achievements in order to help further learning as the basis of a national assessment system. It makes clear that a system along these lines could play a substantial part in the professional development of teachers, in raising standards of teaching and learning, and in improving parental and public confidence in our education system.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales and I welcome the broad framework proposed in the report and will be considering its detailed recommendations. We shall be happy to receive comments on those recommendations. I am asking the mathematics and science working groups, and the Kingman committee on English, to take this broad framework into account in their work on attainment targets and related assessment arrangements in their subjects. My right hon. Friend and I will be giving similar guidance, subject to refinements which may be needed in the light of comments on the recommendations, to other subject working groups which may be set up.

I am inviting the task group to continue in being for a further period, in order to undertake more detailed study of arrangements for implementing and administering the national assessment system; to discuss, with working 206W groups and others, more specific criteria for assessment arrangements in different subjects; and to offer further advice as necessary in the light of the public reaction to its report.