Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 13 March 2017 to Question 66862, whether it is her Department's policy to allow parents to withdraw their children from statutory assessments in Key Stages 1 and 2.

As most parents recognise, assessment is an important part of primary education to help identify how their children are performing in key subjects.

The responsibility for making the final decision about whether it is appropriate to enter an individual pupil for the statutory assessments resides with that pupil’s head teacher, using their professional judgment. As statutory assessments are a fundamental part of our primary education system, it is not the Department’s policy to allow parents to withdraw their children from them.