Tory pledge to make 11-year-olds resit Maths and English tests axed by Justine Greening
U-turn comes after unions declared war on the 'Year 7 resits' threatening boycott unless plans were changed
THE EDUCATION Secretary has binned a Tory Election promise to force struggling 11 year-olds to resit Maths and English tests.
Ms Greening caved into union pressure and U-turned on ‘Year 7 resits’ plans for children who fail tests in their final year at primary school.
And she added that compulsory so-called 'Key Stage 1' tests in spelling, punctuation and grammar tests would also be scrapped.
The shock move came just weeks after unions declared war on the plan and threatened a boycott of next year’s assessments unless the Government changed its plans.
The jubilant NUT praised Ms Greening for listening to them and “ending the excessive pressure on children”.
Resits were a key plank of the Tory Election Manifesto in 2015 as part of a drive to improve schools standards.
The party said: “If children do not reach the required standards in their exams at the end of primary school, they will resit them at the start of secondary school to make sure no pupil is left behind.”
But speaking yesterday Ms Greening said: “We’re not going to introduce them.
“My sense was that the real focus needed to be on helping children to catch up and that was a smarter way of approaching those children who do not reach the expected level at Key Stage 2.”
Secondary schools will now have the “option” to ask children to resit exams. Teaching unions were also promised there would be no new exams introduced until 2018-2019.
The decision came just 24 hours after the Treasury binned plans for a radical shake-up of the annuities market for millions of pensioners.
Last year David Cameron ditched a proposed cap on care home costs just two months after the Tories Election victory. A DfE spokesman said yesterday’s decision had been agreed at a Cabinet level but declined to be drawn on why the change had been made at this point.
Ms Greening took over as Education Secretary from Nicky Morgan – nicknamed ‘Ms U-Turn’ – in Theresa May’s reshuffle.
Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner said: “It’s no wonder that after the summer SATS results chaos that the Government have been forced to u-turn on their manifesto commitment to make children take resits just as they start secondary school.
“Theresa May has no answers to the real challenges facing all our children – school budgets falling, the teacher shortage crisis, rising class sizes and a failure to give all children the best start in life.”
The Association of Teachers and Lecturers said children, parents and teachers would be “relieved that the toxic proposal” over resits had been shelved.
In July, the Department for Education revealed that just 53 per cent of children leaving primary school had reached the ‘expected standard’ in all three topics of reading, maths and writing.
The exams took place amid fierce criticism from teachers and parents who claimed the new regime was placing far too much pressure on young children.
At the time, the Department for Education said: “These results … vindicate the reforms introduced by Michael Gove and continued by Nicky Morgan.”