Exam results delay anguish

9:08am Friday 18th July 2008

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THOUSANDS of school pupils in York, North and East Yorkshire could face an agonising wait until September to find out their Sats exam results.

In York alone, about 2,200 Year 9 students are still waiting to find out the results of their Key Stage 3 Sats exams in English, maths and science, results which they should have had weeks ago.

Schools have been assured by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) they will receive the results on a final deadline today. But, as many finish their term today or at the beginning of next week, this means children may not get their results until September as they need to be checked over.

The knock-on effect is that at some schools class sets for September have had to be decided on teacher’s assessments and, if these differ dramatically when the Sats come in, pupils may be moved from one set to another in the autumn.

Head teachers have hit out at exam markers ETS after a national problem with getting Sats exam marks back to schools on time before the end of the summer term. Schools now have until September 10 to appeal if they want scripts to be remarked.

Meanwhile, at primary schools almost all the Key Stage 2 results for pupils leaving for secondary school were supposed to have been published online for schools to access on Tuesday – a week after they should have been available, but some York schools are still experiencing difficulties.

At secondary level, Fulford School in York has 205 pupils waiting to find out their results.

Head teacher, Steve Smith said: “It’s been a complete mess-up, a real fiasco. We do look at the Sats results and use them as a basis to put students into various groups and, if you haven’t got those results, it causes timetabling problems for September. The only way I can see it happening is to base it on teacher estimates and then we will have to do a re-jig if the results come out and they are radically different.”

At Joseph Rowntree School in New Earswick, 200 pupils have been affected. Head teacher, Hugh Porter, said: “There’s too much assessment going on at once with the Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3, GCSE and A-level exams all being marked and the system is unable to cope with the volume.

“People have been warning the Government that the system is overloaded year in year out and there have even been cases of university students being used as markers.”

Huntington head teacher John Tomsett said: “I can see this from two points of view. As a parent, my son was waiting to get his Key Stage 2 results back and has been having nightmares about it. As a head teacher I feel incredibly sorry for the traumatised students and their parents.

“Nobody seems to be being held to account at the moment. The schools and the council are held to account for these results and I think the Government need to take decisive action to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Ken Boston, the Government’s exams chief at the QCA (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority), has apologised for the situation.

ETS has apologised already and says the situation will not be repeated.

Dr Boston told the children, schools and families select committee there had been weekly meetings involving the exams regulator the National Assessment Agency (NAA) and ETS since last September and daily meetings since the beginning of May.

But ETS repeatedly assured the regulator that it would deliver the results by the July 8 deadline, despite the widespread anecdotal evidence that all was not well.

It was not until June 26 that it had formally notified him that it would not do so.