SATs deserve a caning

11:20am Monday 21st July 2008

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SCHOOL league tables are controversial at the best of times.

Next year the fall out will be nuclear if they are published.

The marking this year of the tests that the tables are based on has been ‘appalling, ‘shambolic’ and ‘disgraceful’.

Those are the words of St. Augustine’s RC High School head Anthony McNamara.

Some 200 pupils at his school were marked as absent for tests they had attended.

Across the country, marking has been delayed and many teachers report that scripts have come back with pupils being incorrectly graded.

Many teachers were already not in favour of league tables, claiming they restrict teaching and subject children to too much pointless testing.

In the face of such doubt, it was vital the administration of the ranking system is carried out impeccably.

To put both tutors and pupils through the stresses of the tests and to cock up the marking so badly is a disgrace.

According to national reports the US firm awarded the £165million contract to mark SATs is facing the sack as a result of a catalogue of errors.

But the damage has already been done.

Ministers’ job now is to ensure the situation is never repeated.

It is the least the children and teachers deserve.