The minutes of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority board meeting on the 21st of May have just been published and they show a complete failure by the board to engage with the Sats crisis. This meeting occurred just after David Laws, the Lib Dem education spokesman, had questioned Ed Balls in the Commons about the “shambles that we have seen over the past couple of weeks in the marking of 1.2 million key stage 2 and key stage 3 test papers”. But the minutes record that David Gee, the acting managing director of the National Assessment Agency, informed the board that:
“the school experience had been good; that there had been no criticism on the content of the tests; and that process changes were implemented this year to reduce burden on schools. ETS in their first year responsible for the marking of the tests have had some difficulties in support for the 10,000 markers.
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