SPTC asked its Parents Voice survey group for their thoughts on the Government’s Draft National Improvement Framework for education, which puts specific responsibilities on parents and carers and, importantly, reintroduces standardised assessment of pupils.
265 people responded: overall, 29.3% of respondents agree with the principle of standardised assessment while 49.3% have mixed feelings. 16.4% disagree with it.
For most respondents, the priority is sharing data between child, parent and teacher rather than with other schools or local authorities, with a preference score of 4.66 out of 5. Collection of data at a national level for comparison between councils scored just 3.09 on the same measure.
Eileen Prior, SPTC executive director, commented:
“From the feedback we received, it seems parents’ greatest concern is the way data from the assessments would be used. In schools where standardised assessment is already used, participants rated their satisfaction at 2.4 out of 5 when asked about the way the information is shared. To us this indicates that gathering data does not solve the fundamental issue of how schools share good quality information with families in an effective way, and involve them in supporting their child’s learning.”
Many of those who took part felt that making data available on a national basis will lead to schools feeling pressure to rise higher in league tables, rather than using it to identify support and next steps for individual pupils.
One parent commented “A test score is self-limiting as it does not capture the strengths and achievements of pupils who do not test well.”
Read the full survey report here