Over the past couple of weeks, your headteacher has probably been checking the NCA Tools website to find out whether or not those all-important appeals that were put in back in July were successful. After all, heads can roll on the basis of a single mark when dealing with small primary cohorts.

And it seems that the answer is likely to be disappointing. After all the fury about incorrectly-placed semi-colons and the like, it seems that the Standards and Testing Agency (STA) and its partners are sticking rigidly to their rules, regardless of whether or not they make sense.

For a couple of months every summer, every primary school must set aside some cupboard space, invest in enough locks and keep a running record of anybody who goes within 30 paces of test papers without a pass from Mr Gibb himself, it seems. The fact that the exact same key stage 1 test papers are available for teachers to download anyway, or that the Department for Education itself seemed to struggle with keeping the test papers secure last year, is academic: schools cannot be trusted.

The double standards apply, too, when it comes to the rules. We must make sure that we abide by every letter of the Assessment and Reporting Arrangements, and be seen to be squeaky clean. Markers, meanwhile, work under a cloak of secrecy to ensure that teachers cannot fully understand the system.

Recently, the STA upheld its claim that teachers should not be permitted to see the full guidance provided to markers because it will add to our workload. It seems that by keeping us in the dark, and allowing us to guess what the requirements will be each year, we are in fact being protected from ourselves by our gracious masters.

Controversial guidance

None of this would be so bad if the guidance were uncontroversial, but we know that this is not the case. We have seen reported in the pages of this magazine the concerns felt by teachers about the bizarre expectations of children. Evidently, when reading the instruction “insert a semi-colon into the correct place”, children are meant to infer that the priority is that the semi-colon matches the tiny printed font, rather than being clear to the marker. Perhaps we are meant to treat markers as though they are fools? Although, apologies for telling you that: I don’t mean to add to your workload.

Sadly, such inference skills are not required of markers. Take, for example, the question on the reading test in which children were asked about the advice given about picking up a cat. One might presume that being told to carry the cat by its neck in the way that its mother does, would provide the information needed to the reader. It would also show, surely, that the child has correctly identified and retrieved the information requested. However, not so. Once again, we must presume that the marker is an idiot. Instead, the answer must explain the hold in more detail: no inference should be required by the poor marker.

Don’t worry about such vagaries of the system, though. According to the STA, inexperienced and unconfident teachers are likely to misunderstand the rules of the game. This failure to comprehend will result in “long-term risk to the quality of teaching practice” apparently, thereby “putting at risk primary education standards”.

See, what you failed to understand about the secret guidance was that it was kept from you for your own good and the good of the nation. For it is us - the teachers - who are clearly the root cause of the problems. Again.

Michael Tidd is deputy head at Edgewood Primary School in Nottinghamshire