From the Guardian: The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, pledged to scrap national Sats tests and called for a shorter school curriculum in a speech attacking the government’s “one-size-fits-all” approach to education.
In a speech at the CentreForum thinktank, Clegg said that the money saved from scrapping key stage tests for seven- and 14-year-olds would be ploughed into early assessment at age five and a huge expansion of one-to-one reading and numeracy tuition. The party would introduce a much shorter curriculum and allow all schools the curriculum freedoms currently enjoyed by academies. Clegg said,
“By scaling back some of the excessive national testing … we will save millions of pounds. And the money can be put directly into improving basic skills for those who presently fall behind from day one, and never catch up. “My intention is to use testing to target support – not merely to target criticism.
One-to-one tuition for five-, six- and seven-year-olds has been shown to have huge benefits.”
An independent “education standards authority” would tackle accusations of dumbing down by ensuring exam standards. It would incorporate Ofsted and commission research on good educational practices and give advice to schools. The DCSF would be halved in size and focus only on setting the broad strategic goals of the education system and the legal frameworks.
“Ministers would have to stop sending their regular diet of directives and diktats to schools. In fact I’d ban them from doing it – with an education freedom act.”
Targets would be changed to make schools address the needs of all pupils, not just those on the border between key grades.
Sounds like sense to me…
