National testing 'should be scrapped'

National tests for children aged seven, 11 and 14 should be replaced with a system of sample testing and individual pupil progress assessment, it has been suggested today.

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) is proposing the change to the system, which forms the basis for annual school league tables, in order to make Britain's testing procedure more 'personalised'.

QCA chief executive Ken Boston insisted that this was not a call to "abandon" the national tests, but merely "looking forward to something that might be even better".

Speaking on the Today programme, Mr Boston outlined how the new system would work.

"At the moment at the end of key stage tests we apply the same test to every child and we have a new test each year," he said.

"An alternative is to take a sample of students, perhaps three per cent, and apply the same tests to that sample year on year, no change in questions at all.

"There are some systems which do this, the Americans do a similar thing, and you actually get a rather more accurate figure."

And he explained that each pupil would sit a "progress test" when they were considered ready to do so.

"The progress test is envisaged as a test which would be an externally-set piece of work which would be externally marked, but would be applied not at one date in the year at the end of the key stage, but from time to time as the child is ready for it," he said.

"The decision would be made about when the child should be tested by the teacher, by the parent, and really by the child himself or herself, because there comes a time when a child may think he's ready to go up a level and may want to take the test."

He added that modern education needed to be about "personalisation, about bespoke learning, about timelines and focus in using the curriculum".

"In every domain of learning children are at different stages and the whole essence of personalised learning is to extend the child into an area of challenge, but one in which he or she is likely to achieve success and children work at different rates in that way."

And he suggested that this would be "a far better and professional system" than the one currently in use.

Responding to the suggestions, a spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) said national tests are "here to stay" and provide "important, objective evidence of a child's progress".

"We, like the QCA, are keen to make sure that the testing regime encourages children to make progress and provides parents with a real picture of how their child is moving ahead," the spokesman said.

"That is why we are currently consulting on our proposals for children to take more tests as soon as they are ready rather than waiting until the end of a long key stage."

The QCA has today published its annual report for 2006, in which Mr Boston talks of two 'tipping points' in modern education which, if reached, can "transform" Britain's education system.

"My two tipping points - personalised learning backed by diagnostic assessment in classrooms, and national accreditation of employer-provided training - have much in common," he said in a speech to launch the report.

He added: "If - by good management, creativity and hard work - we can reach both tipping points, we will transform education and training in this country."