Ofsted: Annual Report 2012-13

Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend is quite right. When the new chief inspector came into office, one thing that I thought he did very well was to abolish the appalling low-expectation term “satisfactory” and set much higher expectations for schools. It has clearly been proved through the academies programme and other schools that setting higher expectations for our children does work.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, the report implies that increased testing of children may improve attainment. Many teachers and educationalists believe and state that excessive testing takes time away from teaching. Do the Government agree?

[Lord Nash]

Assessment, as opposed to testing, is obviously crucial to ensure effective accountability and to work out whether pupils are making progress, which is an issue that I know Ofsted is very focused on. We have held a public consultation on proposals for key stage 1 assessment, whose results have not been published. As far as key stage 3 tests are concerned, we have no plans to reintroduce key stage 3 tests but we expect all schools to be able to demonstrate to Ofsted, through whatever assessment mechanism they use, that their pupils are making progress.