Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Education – in the Senedd at 1:45 pm on 10 May 2017.
Can I thank the Member for his questions regarding standardised testing? Let me be absolutely clear what the purpose of those assessments is about, because that’s their main purpose. It is to provide another way of assessing where a child is in their education— an independent way of doing that. And I think that provides reassurance and an important source of information for teachers, headteachers and, crucially, for parents, too. It provides the building blocks for those conversations with your child’s teacher about how best your child can be supported to reach their full potential. However, I’ve acknowledged that, in many ways, the assessments are crude, and that’s why last week I announced a multimillion-pound investment into the development of online adaptive testing, which will give us an even better way of assessing where a child is in their education.