Educational Assessment System Reform

Sam Carling Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Josh Dean]

Again, I could not agree more. Being trapped in that cycle of failure leaves a mark on young people. We want young people to leave school ready for work and life, and to thrive with confidence. A system that grinds them down cannot be correct. I could not agree more on the point of post-16. I have had a number of conversations about that over recent weeks. That is an area that desperately needs reform, so that we get our young people ready to thrive in life.

The independent curriculum and assessment review offers a vital opportunity to tackle that injustice and one of the upstream drivers of the youth mental health crisis, and build a system fit for the 21st century. No 11-year-old child should feel bad about themselves because of exams. SATs are used to rank the performance of schools; they are not supporting children’s learning.

Timed tests over four days in year 6 are neither a reliable way to capture a pupil’s knowledge and abilities, nor a way to monitor school standards. Assessment should support a pupil’s learning and be clearly separated from school performance metrics, because placing the burden of accountability on children at such a formative age cannot be right.

[Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is giving a powerful account of the inadequacy of SATs. Does he agree that the fact that so many secondary schools retest their pupils when they arrive shows that they do not have trust in SATs either?

[Josh Dean]

I cannot remember the numbers off the top of my head, but my hon. Friend is right to highlight the number of secondary schools that retest students because of the lack of reliance and belief that SATs accurately measure their ability. We urgently need to rethink our approach to assessment at the primary level, and all options should be on the table. I would be grateful if the Minister could address the concern around SATs in her response, and confirm the Department’s commitment to addressing them when the curriculum and assessment review concludes.

We need to rebalance the system, reducing the dominance of high-stakes, end-of-course exams for GCSE and A-level students. A diversification of assessment methods could reduce pressure on young people, allowing them to showcase a broader range of strengths and better prepare them for life after school. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm whether the Department would implement such an approach, should it be recommended in the independent curriculum and assessment review’s final report.

Moving away from reliance on traditional exams and reducing the volume of exams that young people sit does not mean sacrificing rigour, as set out in Cambridge OCR’s “Striking the balance” report. It concluded that the overall volume of exams can be reduced without impacting the reliability of grades, and that greater consideration should be given to non-exam assessments. A well-designed, modular, multimodal system could be equally robust and offer fairer, more balanced ways to measure achievement. Universities across the country already do that to great effect and could offer a model to learn from for our school system.

More widely, a whole-school approach is essential to supporting children and young people’s mental health. An assessment system that balances wellbeing and academic success would be complemented by a curriculum, teaching and learning approach that promotes resilience and supports social and emotional learning. Will the Minister confirm that wellbeing will be a central focus in the Department’s approach when it comes to implementing the findings of the independent curriculum and assessment review and more generally?

I am under no illusions that reform of the assessment system is a silver bullet to resolve the youth mental health crisis. Young people sit at the intersection of many complicated challenges, and this must be part of a wider piece of work to support them. I recognise that it will take time and will need to be phased in, to avoid overwhelming the education system, in consultation with our educators. But children and young people are experts in their experiences. When they tell us something is wrong, it is our responsibility in this House to listen and act accordingly, not decide that we know better.

The last major reform of the assessment system took place a decade ago. We cannot miss this opportunity to get it right for young people. They need us to embrace ambitious reform now, not in another 10 years, to help tackle the youth mental health crisis and deliver a lasting assessment system that supports their wellbeing and their academic success and better prepares them for work and life.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)]

Before the summer recess, I hosted a “Truth about SATs” parliamentary drop-in with educational reform group More Than a Score. It was a great event, with MPs from all sides of the House sitting down to take some mock SATs exams themselves. Lots of colleagues sat there quite relaxed, chatting to others and evidently fairly confident that these exams for 11-year-olds would not be too taxing. Then the worksheets arrived, and faces fell. That is why I hosted the event in the first place; I saw at first hand why over three quarters of parents think SATs harm children’s mental health, and why 93% of headteachers want the Government to review the entire system.

The spelling, punctuation and grammar exams are stuffed to the brim with questions such as “What is a fronted adverbial?” and “Circle the modal verb”, and questions about subjunctives, determinants, inverted commas, prepositions and past progressives. We all use these grammatical structures automatically, and of course children need to be able to use them in reading and writing, but these are things that intelligent, hard-working adults up and down the country have trouble identifying, and understandably so. Do we really need such an intensive focus on labelling these devices instead of using them? No one is saying that we should not have high standards, nor is anyone saying that grammar is not important, but there are serious questions about whether that is the best way to teach it.

In four—sometimes five—out of seven years of primary school, children are taking statutory exams. The results of those exams, as we have heard, are important to schools as they are used for accountability. Department for Education officials can use key stage 2 performance data when setting criteria for allocating additional funding, which leads to teaching to a test, focusing on a narrower curriculum with the hope that it leads to better scores for the kids, which schools—strapped for funding for years under the last Government—really need.

There is a real danger that the exams will put kids off learning for life. Cramming a student’s head full of fronted adverbials and the like is not a recipe for a love of literature and language, funnily enough. This is a key concern of teachers and parents who lament that a focus on spelling, punctuation and grammar tests does nothing to encourage students to think creatively about reading and writing. We need to be clear about what exactly we are testing across the different stages of education. Are we focusing too much on detailed knowledge in some areas when we should be increasing our assessment of broader understanding and skills instead? We now have a Government willing to properly look at the shortcomings of curriculum and assessment, and I really look forward to the outcome of the review. The interim report talks ambitiously about empowering teachers to foster a love of learning. I hope to see more of that thinking in the final report.

During my first year here I have had a lot of discussions around the importance of strengthening critical thinking skills earlier in the curriculum, as has been mentioned, particularly in this age we live in of online misinformation and the need to be able to tell truth from fiction from a much younger age than has perhaps been critical in the past. An ambitious and modern review would tackle these problems head on. Although the interim report gives a nod to critical thinking, I would like to see more of a focus there.

To conclude, we have a real need to balance assessment, which is necessary to achieve high standards, alongside a curriculum that gives children the freedom to build a curious and inquisitive relationship with learning.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for School Standards (Georgia Gould)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Josh Dean) for securing this debate. I know how much work he has done on supporting youth mental health, along with YoungMinds and its wider campaigns. I thank him for his championing of young people. I also thank everyone who took the time to write to the Government’s curriculum and assessment review. I was pleased to hear so many hon. Members talking about conversations they have been having with young people, especially families with children with special educational needs, and bringing their voices to the Chamber—particularly the moving story of Taylor and their experiences. I am glad to hear that they are now thriving.

So many of the contributions have focused on how our education system is not working for some young people. It is true that, on average, we have moved up the league tables, but we have also seen a growing gap for so many young people. It is a disgrace that only a quarter of disadvantaged young people get a grade 5 in their GCSEs. There are too many of those young people who do not get to access all the opportunities that come with it. We have heard time and again, in an absolutely packed Chamber here, how young people with special educational needs are being left behind. As a Government, we want high standards for every student, and no child to be left behind. We want that to be part of our education system.

[Sam Carling]

I wonder whether the Minister has the same experience as I do. When I speak to employers in North West Cambridgeshire, I hear time and again that young people do not have the skills for the workplace and that the education system has not left them with the right mindset and abilities. Is something going direly wrong with the metrics that the Conservatives have left us with when they talk about how we have had one of the best systems in the world?

[Georgia Gould]

One of the really damning statistics is how many young people are not in education, employment or training at the end of the education system. We cannot afford to leave any child behind. Every child needs the best start and to achieve at school. That is what this Government are focused on.