Anger over '˜poor' Sats test results

Teachers are planning to bombard the Government with protest letters after only half the nation's pupils passed this year's controversial Sats tests.

The county’s National Association of Head Teachers has written an online complaint to Education Minister Nicky Morgan following what was described by teachers as a “debacle” with as many as 15 amendments and changes to the tests.

Amid protests they were too hard, pressure on staff and pupils was described as “severe.”

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The petition was set up by the Lancaster and Morecambe cluster and schools across Lancashire are being urged to sign.

NAHT Spokesman Tony Roberts said that with 94 per cent of Lancashire schools judged Good or Outstanding by Ofsted poor results show “there is something wrong in the assessment process,” and he urged schools “to support your children and your staff and carry out what is effectively damage limitation.”

Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron said pupils were being treated “like a lab rats” and added: “These SAT’s results show starkly that they are gambling the futures of these young people on Michael Gove’s misty-eyed world view where every school is a prep or grammar school, students are robotic and teachers skip around teaching past participles and antonyms by rote to seven-year-olds.”

Simon Jones executive member for the NUT said: “In the judgment of teachers, assessment arrangements in 2016 have been shambolic, a fiasco, a disgrace, farcical. Guidance has been late and frequently changing. “Test papers have been leaked. The design of tests has been poor.”

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