The part of the Panda that concerned me most (TES, May 28) was the health warning: “You should bear in mind that the validity and reliability of the latter comparisons depend on the quality of teacher assessments”.
This cautionary comment refers to the correlation between a school’s performance and national averages based on teacher assessment, a measure that I understood was considered of at least equal value to test results.
No such caveat indicates that the tests may not cover the full range of the curriculum studied, that they haven’t been set after full consultation with teachers, and so on. All the more galling when this year’s key stage 2 maths contained nothing on percentages, surely one of the most elementary “real-life” problems the populace has to face.
Paul Milner, Headteacher, Harbury primary school, Warwickshire
