Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment his Department has made of potential merits of deferring (a) Key Stage 1 SATs, (b) Key Stage 2 SATs and (c) other statutory primary school assessments during the academic year 2021-22 to enable teachers to focus on supporting children to catch-up on learning after the covid-19 outbreak.

The department is taking forward a full programme of primary assessments to take place in the 2021/22 academic year. The assessments will help parents, schools and the department to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on pupils more clearly, and how this varies between different groups of pupils (for example, disadvantaged pupils compared with the wider population), schools and local authority areas. At a local level, the data will provide vital information to parents about their child’s attainment, support transition to secondary schools, and identify where additional support is best targeted to individuals. At a national level, the data will help inform policy decisions about support for schools, enable analysis to underpin education recovery initiatives and understand their effectiveness, and to track system progress as we emerge from the pandemic.

Although schools should encourage pupils to work hard and achieve well, the department does not recommend that they devote excessive preparation time to assessment. The department trusts schools to administer assessments in the appropriate way.