The current SATS marks scandal is going to have huge knock-on effects. Schools are getting back results with pupils marked as absent who were present, other scripts are being returned unmarked and there is growing evidence that the grading has been—to put it mildly—inconsistent. This means that this year’s school league tables are going to be hugely flawed.
In these circumstances, the government appears to have three options. It can just not publish league tables this year which would be embarrassing and illustrate just how big a cock-up this has been. It can demand that the National Assessment Agency finds the money to have all the papers remarked but the problem with this is that the NAA doesn’t have £20 million spare to pay for this and even if it did it is doubtful that they could be marked before the league tables are due to come out in August. Or, it can go ahead and publish the league tables despite their flaws—at which point, schools will go spare about their reputations being damaged by inaccurate results and being forced into a special OFSTED inspection regime on the back on this.
Ed Balls is currently trying to keep as much distance between himself and this fiasco as possible. But at some point he is going to have to make a decision about how to proceed.
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