The recent SATS fiasco has kind of affected me, my daughter has got her results but they are unconfirmed at the moment because the school has not had the actual scripts back to check them. I do know that 11 children in her school didn’t get some of their results back with the rest - but I guess that’s better than some schools I’ve been reading about.

Two questions though…

I read that our govt is reluctant to blame/break the contract with the US company supposedly organising the marking etc because there is a huge penalty to pay for breaking the contract early. Excuse me, where did it become OK to continue paying someone after they’ve made huge mistakes? We seem to be seeing this all over businesses - useless chairmen getting pay-offs etc. Isn’t it about time we wised up?

My second question is, are we so badly off in the UK that we couldn’t find a British firm to deal with this contract? Or did we just give it to the lowest bidder hoping everything will turn out OK?

I don’t know about other children but I know my daughter worked hard for her SATS and has ended up with level 5 across the board (level 4 is average for her age). But it now seems that her hard work will possibly be regarded as useless as the exam results cannot be totally trusted. Plus there is now talk of children having to sit more assessments at the start of next term to help teachers ensure that the marks they have are in the correct range. So more pressure for already over-tested students.

Thanks Mr Balls.