One of the things that has come out in the Sats scandal is how there was a complete failure to do due diligence on ETS, a company whose track record did not inspire confidence. It now turns out that even after the problems with Sats had begun to emerge, the Immigration Service approved the use of ETS testing to assess immigrants’ knowledge of English; the tests form part of the new points-based approach to immigration. The consequences of these tests being messed up in the same way that the Sats have been are horrendous. Immigrants could be refused the right to work here or put on the path to citizenship on the basis on inaccurate marks.
The government now needs to both publish the contract with ETS—it is a scandal that taxpayers can’t see a contract that is being paid for using their money, when there is no national security justification for keeping the contract private—and reveal what communication there has been within government about ETS. It is remarkable that a contract worth more than £150 million appears to have been awarded without even the most preliminary of checks.
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