Schools chief's fury over SATS "disgrace"

12:48pm Thursday 17th July 2008

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CRUCIAL exam papers for 11-year-olds have not been marked properly, Buckinghamshire's top education boss has claimed.

There had been "widespread mis-marking" for key stage 2 English tests said Marion Clayton, cabinet member for achievement and learning at Buckinghamshire County Council.

The failures - which have hit headlines nationwide - risked children being told their results were not as good as previously thought, she said.

Pupils also take the exams in maths and science.

Key Stage 2 results - for children in the last year of primary school - were released on Tuesday, a week late.

Many heads believe the "subjective" nature of English has led to poor marking.

The council said 33 out of 126 primaries had received incomplete results and "many other schools are asking for remarks of the papers".

Mrs Clayton said: "We are being told of widespread mis-marking, sometimes it's too lenient and sometimes too harsh. There is little consistency of marking and no parity.

"And it gets worse - some schools still have missing papers.

"We've learned that an entire batch of papers from two schools turned up in completely random schools in other parts of the country.

"Another school has had papers returned with pupils with names starting with the letters A-G missing."

Mrs Clayton, who declined to name these schools, called the situation a "disgrace" that will "cause untold and unnecessary concern to parents, pupils and schools".

She said: "What will it do to children's confidence if they are marked down?"

Rosemary Saunders, headteacher at Downley Primary School, said: "We will certainly be returning some of the papers because we don't think that certain areas have been marked as accurately as they could.

"We will have to go through the rest with a fine tooth comb to see that the scores are what they should have been."

But Graham Kilner, head at High Wycombe's Highworth Combined School, said while the delay was "very regrettable" it had no issues with the marking.

Key stage 3 results, for 14-year-olds, were due last week but are now expected tomorrow. These are needed to put children into sets and inform league tables.

Beaconsfield School head Alex Russell said: "We are obviously very concerned about the quality of the marking.

"We will be checking all the papers that come back to make sure they are accurately marked as they should have been."

Dr Mark Fenton, head at Dr Challoner's Grammar School in Amersham, said: "I think that debacle is an accurate description - clearly it's not a very satisfactory situation."