Report suggests multiple-choice exams should replace written tests in primary schools

Written tests for primary schools in England should be replaced with multiple-choice questions which would be easier to mark, a rightwing thinktank report urged today.

Dropping the existing essay-based system in favour of multiple-choice tests would produce a “far more accurate and reliable” picture of how well pupils and schools are performing, said the Centre for Policy Studies.

Externally marked Sats tests are taken by 11-year-olds in the core subjects of English, maths and science in the final year of primary school but have been plagued with marking problems in recent years.

The schools secretary, Ed Balls, scrapped similar key stage 3 tests for 14-year-olds in October following chaos with Sats over the summer.

The Centre for Policy Studies’ report published today argued that there was an underlying problem with open-ended essay questions intended to test pupils’ critical-thinking skills.

The “intractable problem” was that there were no right or wrong answers and it was not realistic to expect examiners to accurately mark essays written by 600,000 11-year-olds, the report concluded.

Repeated failures over exam marking have “undermined the validity and reputation” of external exams over the past six years, it said.

Last summer more than a million schoolchildren had their results delayed after a series of errors, including technical problems and a failure to train markers on time.

Ken Boston, the head of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), who was suspended after a critical report about the Sats fiasco, has warned ministers that there is a “very significant” risk that pupils’ results will be delayed again this year.

But the report’s author, Tom Burkard, the director of the Promethean Trust, a charity for dyslexic children, said the mounting pressure to scrap external examination at 11-plus must be resisted.

Parents, teachers and politicians need to have rigorous evidence on pupil performance, he said.

Turning Sats into multiple-choice tests would be more reliable, far cheaper and quicker to mark, be both a more accurate test of knowledge and ability, and also enable year-on-year comparisons of school performance.

It would also make it impossible for teachers to ‘teach the test’ – a common complaint of the existing system, the report, Ticking the Right Boxes, argues.

“When compared to essay tests that are adequately marked, multiple-choice tests are 12 times more efficient in terms of the time taken to sit a test, and over 7,000 times more efficient in terms of marking time,” the report states.

“In the real world, where a lack of knowledge can have disastrous and costly consequences, the essay exam is increasingly irrelevant.”

Burkard said: “You can get a lot of information on how pupils are doing and you can do it in a way that is far less stress for teachers and pupils. Sats are getting attacked from every angle right now. As testing knowledge goes they’re a joke.”

The report highlights an example question asking pupils to continue writing a script in which a child is convincing his parents he should be allowed to stay up late.

Burkard said: “What educational value that has is mystifying to me.”

He argues that the current tests do not accurately test pupils’ writing skills.

“Pupils lose very few points for writing absolute rubbish. Because of the way markers are instructed to mark, as long as someone has written something that can be construed as an answer they can get the question right.”

He added: “There is no incentive under the current system to teach good writing skills.”

The report concludes that multiple-choice exams would end the annual debate about rising standards and dumbing down.

“Individual tests of equivalent weight can be created with tests created by random selection from a large bank of graded questions,” it said. “Providing that the bank is big enough, it becomes impossible to ‘teach the test’ without teaching the relevant skill, knowledge and concepts.”

Burkard concedes that replacing essay questions with multiple choice would not “immediately” help children with writing. But it would “eliminate a lot of counter-productive activity” in and out of the classroom and allow the introduction of teaching that will improve children’s basic literacy skills.

Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, said: “Sats examinations are designed to assess the depth and breadth of pupils’ learning in key subjects and there are areas of learning which it would be difficult to capture through multiple choice tests.

She said if the proposal were taken up teachers would be rightly suspicious it was purely a money saving exercise. She added that the educational value to be derived from a tick-box form of assessment was “questionable”.

A QCA spokesperson said: “QCA’s statutory tests go through a rigorous two-year development process. All of the questions are thoroughly trialled in schools to make sure the tests are clear, engaging, pitched at a consistent standard from year to year and assess the skills and knowledge required by the national curriculum. The mark schemes are carefully designed and test markers receive comprehensive training on how to apply them.”

A spokesperson for the department for children, schools and families said: “Multiple choice questions play a valuable role in assessment, but there are no plans to make them the sole means of assessment in Sats as it is still important to assess written skills and how pupils can develop an argument for example.”

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