British education secretary rejects scrapping national tests

Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary of Great Britain, has rejected calls for scrapping national curriculum tests for two million 7-, 11-, and 14-year-olds. Johnson said he believed ditching the exams would be "profoundly wrong." "Parents don't want to go back to a world where schools were closed institutions, no one knew what was going on in them. Our responsibility is to ensure that our children leave school with a good grounding in English, maths and science," he said. But the General Teaching Council (GTC), which regulates teachers, in a report submitted to the Commons Select Committee on Education, said too many tests were damaging children's education.

It said the average pupil will take about 70 tests by the time they reach age 16 and argued that national tests should be replaced by testing a random sample which would still give ministers an indication of standards in the classroom. They could also be assessed at each stage of their education when their teachers felt they were ready. The GTC report was seized on by teachers who want fewer tests. This article can be found at The Independent website.