Fewer than three-quarters of seven-year-olds have reached the expected standard in writing this year, a snap poll run by blogger Michael Tidd suggests.

Teachers from 130 schools have shared their results anonymously in an attempt to gauge how their pupils are doing compared with those in other schools, during the first year of the new assessments.

Mr Tidd, deputy head of Edgewood Primary in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, has warned that there is “no real validity to the data” and is collecting it for general interest and its potential for “comforting reassurance”.

Teachers had to test pupils on the new curriculum for the first time this year using reading and maths papers. The spelling, grammar and punctuation test was scrapped this year after the paper was accidentally published online.

The test results are not reported, but are fed into teacher assessments, which are reported to the government and published.

Teachers must assess children’s spelling and punctuation as part of the writing assessment. To reach the expected standard in writing, seven-year-olds must use capital letters and full stops correctly in most of their sentences and use some joined-up writing.

‘Challenging for the pupils’

Mr Tidd’s survey shows that in the tests:

• 64.8 per cent of 6,679 pupils surveyed have a scaled score of 100 or more in the reading test, where 100 represents the expected standard.
• 63.8 per cent of 6,613 pupils surveyed have scored 100 or more in maths.

And in the teacher assessments (which were not necessarily submitted by the same schools which put forward their raw results), the survey of 5,832 pupils shows:

• 79 per cent reached the expected standard or were working at greater depth in reading:
• 77 per cent achieved the same level in maths;
• 70 per cent did the same in writing.

Last year, when level 2 was the expected level, 90 per cent achieved this level in reading, 93 per cent in maths and 88 per cent in writing.

But the results, albeit of a very small sample, are closer to the results for the higher level 2b from last year - which 82 per cent of children reached in reading and maths, and 72 per cent reached in writing.

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