Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they are reviewing the experiences of children who took their standard assessment tests in the last year and who raised problems of inaccessibility.

National Curriculum tests are designed to be as accessible as possible to all pupils. They undergo an exhaustive three year development process, entailing several stages of expert review and trialling with pupils. When developing the tests, the Standards and Testing Agency adheres to the principles of universal design set out in Ofqual’s “Guidance on the Principles of Language Accessibility in National Curriculum Assessments”, which has been attached to this answer.

The assessments which we have introduced this year have a more challenging expected standard to align with a new National Curriculum which sets expectations to match the best-performing education systems around the world. It is right that we set high aspirations for our children - previous expectations were simply too low and too many pupils who met the old standard did not go on to achieve good GCSEs.

We are aware that this year’s English reading test was perceived as being particularly challenging for some pupils. We have listened to the feedback which we have received from schools and are working to improve the test experience for pupils in future years.