2023’s KS2 SATs Reading Paper spurred various views against statutory Primary school assessments—SATs. Not only the children, and their parents, but also Teachers expressed concern that the 2023 test was too pressurising for Year 6 students.

This was not the first time such a complaint has been raised about SATs. Since the beginning of the new national curriculum in 2014, there have been voices around the country asking that KS2 SATs be abolished. KS1 SATs will already be made optional from next academic year, 2024.

So why do we examine the children at all? Ultimately, government has sought to gauge if its pupils are globally competitive academically, while industry is seeking workers for all sorts of roles in all sorts of sectors—and the workers need to be prepared appropriately for each of those roles. However, long before job applications, a young person’s achievements gain them access to other institutions. For example, secondary schools are within their rights to reject an application if a pupil’s Primary SATs results are insufficiently high (though that is rare). However, Secondary schools commonly use the SATs results to stream their Y7 pupils into appropriate classes for some subjects. Sixth Forms set their benchmarks in regards to GCSE results and, of course, Higher Education institutions state very clearly what their entry requirements are.

Optional examinations would fail to provide us with a comprehensive set of results representative of the nation’s children as a whole, if indeed schools opt out. The extension of that idea might be to offer individual families the option, whichever school they attend. And I hesitate to guess how the government would deal with that set of children from the results. It’s largely incomprehensible to me that, special cases aside of course, someone so young, or even the entire school year of children, would drop out. It’s such a shame.

Or we could perhaps design another way of examining the children’s knowledge and abilities, like interviewing or a piece of coursework, for example. We could design a test that the class doesn’t even know is a test, randomly timed and reduce the anxiety. The test could be diluted to a multiple choice format of 30 questions in 15 minutes, or 60 in 20 minutes even… Do we expect that any form of assessment would satisfy everyone?

Teacher assessments may be the most effective way to scrutinise a pupil’s performance within a class, but solely relying on them is risky, and inconsistencies across national results would be inevitable. Even if a student is at the top of their class, they may still be below average against the national standard—or vice versa—such is the breadth of academic education attainment in our country.

Any method needs to be systematic to reveal those who are learning up to the national, or global, age-appropriate standard. Those who have fallen behind might need assistance. Any testing system must be fair to all, which means all children ought to experience an identical test which can be properly and professionally adjudicated, and consistently marked. Results need to demonstrate difference among the candidates because relativity is key to distinguishing one from another, academically in this case. The only way to achieve this is to ensure that almost no candidate can score 100%. Therefore, any test must actually be testing. It may be better for all concerned if the national test is sat on a published, set date, and preparation is condensed rather than stretched out over a longer period as it would be with coursework.

It is, as always, the lead up and the preparation which arouses terrible anxieties and causes harm, even if for some it is the exam day which brings out the worst symptoms. It is essentially the education of the child that provides them with academic confidence and equips them best for any academic test: spelling, timetables, grammar, maths, vocabulary, all of which are basic and frequent within Primary education and arise in SATs tests.

There is necessarily a first time for everything and a SATs test may just be an ideal introduction to the scaled challenges and tests of Secondary school—but sure, we could abolish those too. Believe it or not, some schools are already working towards abandoning GCSE examinations. Those same schools, however, do still recognise the need for A Levels as the qualifying factor enabling entrance to universities. They are not softening; indeed they are highly competitive institutions seeking to replace GCSEs with an alternative variety of Secondary study options.

Ideally, we parents would welcome the report on our child’s progress, and work positively from thereon. It’s unlikely that SATs initiated a child’s first expression or demonstration of being unable to endure academic study and test, but in any case, take time now to consider (as a family) that the child is otherwise wired. Creatively wired perhaps: artistically, sportingly, dramatically, musically, scientifically, mathematically, numerically, economically, for example—but let me also add here that none of these traits or talents are exclusive to non-academic minds. Nor are these fields of study and industry without their versions of tests, challenges, obstacles and pitfalls.

Please note: something else may be at hand which may require an astute teacher to observe, or a medical doctor to diagnose. We know well by now that many children are neuro-diverse and would benefit well from developed teaching methods.

We believe that most children can learn to study happily and embrace scheduled examinations. Just like the young footballer cherishes playing with friends while learning a sport, a well-prepared and able student relishes exams and sees the silent exam hall as their field of play.

Still, the SATs of the recent years may have been distressingly difficult for some, or even many. That some teachers reported not being able to understand some of the 2023 questions themselves is not reassuring so we’ve looked carefully at the paper in question, and past papers too. These are our observations in brief:

This year’s SATs Reading test contained a high proportion of ‘inference’ questions, about 50% of the whole paper. Inferences involve thinking beyond what you can see and hear, which requires deeper thought and extrapolation than simply identifying a word in the text.

Another difference with previous years is a new type of vocabulary questions, defining the double meaning of a word. One question asked to define the meaning of ‘hotspot’ in two ways, requiring students to read both the literal and contextual meanings.

The length of passages was also longer than previous years. Most past papers contained less than 2,000 words in total, whereas this year the words totalled to 2,106. (The 2019 paper also contained 2,168 words, though those questions were more straightforward than making inferences.) Despite the length, the difficulty level of the passages was in line with pre-Covid papers. Analyses of the sentence length, word length and word difficulty show that the grammar and vocabulary of the passages were typical of previous years, and indeed suitable for 11-year-old readers on average, as with most past papers.

In conclusion, the 2023 SATs Reading paper will likely have put students under pressure due to the combination of longer passages, the higher proportion of inference questions and some new, unconventional, unexpected questions—without any additional time allowance given. But that is not to say that the 2023 paper was extraordinarily or unfairly difficult, only it was certainly testing.