New government Key Stage One school SATs receive mixed response

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Young school pupils will have to be able to read just over 90 words per minute and sound out unfamiliar words ‘without undue hesitation’, according to the Government’s latest interim teacher assessment framework.

In order to work at what the Standards and Testing Agency calls ‘the expected standard’, seven-year-olds will also have to subtract two-digit numbers mentally over the 2015/16 academic year as well as being able to estimate reasonably when checking answers to mathematical calculations.

The new End of Key Stage One guidelines from the Department for Education (DoE) – which have been published online – also reveal how fractions and divisions will feature in the tests for the first time.

The deputy head of Edgewood Primary School, Michael Tidd, however, took to his online blog to hit out at the new plans and said he wasn’t too impressed by the poor progress on assessment from the department.

He wrote: “To be offered an ‘interim’ structure, after all this time, strikes me as atrocious. Schools have not been offered the chance to teach an interim curriculum.”

He went on to add: “What of the child in Year 2 who reads competently with good understanding, but struggles to maintain a pace of 90 words per minute; are they to be deemed to be falling behind?”

A spokesman for the DoE defended the new guidelines and described how young people today need to master literacy and numeracy skills by way of a new curriculum and ‘world-class exams’, reports Mail Online.

Are the new guidelines tough or not? Have a go at some of the Maths and English questions: