School league tables will be four months late

Delay in the publication leaves parents in the dark when it comes to choosing a school for their child next year.

The Sats marking crisis has delayed the publication of school league tables until March next year.

Ministers have been forced to postpone the publication of school league tables following this summer’s Sats marking crisis. The league tables are currently expected to be four months late officials from the Department for Children, Schools and Families confirmed. They are now scheduled for March next year but no guarantee is being offered.

The delays to the school-by-school marks from tests taken in schools in England leave parents in most areas without the most up to date data to help them chose a primary or secondary school for their child next year. Most local authorities ask parents to submit school application forms by February. The government justifies the national testing system for 11- and 14-year olds – which is deeply unpopular with schools – on the basis that scores help parents decide on the best school in their area.

A spokesman for the DCFS confirmed the tables of results for every school in the country will be published in March 2009 instead of November 2008.

In July, the government announced a delay in results for individual pupils being returned to schools. The new exam marking firm, ETS Europe, which was brought in to deliver this year’s Sats for 1.2m pupils for the first time, had run into multiple problems. Test markers complained of the late delivery of scripts, poor training and jammed helplines. A backlog grew and ETS set up 24-hour emergency marking centres. At one point, the National Assessment Agency went in and found 10,000 unopened emails from increasingly desperate schools. The schools minister, Jim Knight, said one factor was the “different style of management” compared with the previous British-based companies.

ETS’s ?156m contract was terminated last summer but a small proportion of schools are still waiting for their marks.

Teaching unions have campaigned vociferously against the tests, which they say have narrowed children’s learning as they are under pressure to teach to the test so that their schools do well in league tables. Their claims are backed by research from Cambridge University as well as reports from Ofsted inspections.

The shadow children’s secretary, Michael Gove, said: “This is a direct consequence of the government’s appalling handling of this year’s Sats tests.

“Thousands of parents may not have up to date information on their local primary schools in time to make their choices for next year because of Ed Balls’s chaotic exam regime. Yet ministers still refuse to apologise for their mistakes and we still don’t know what is happening with next year’s tests.”

The schools secretary, Ed Balls, has said the tests are “not set in stone”, pointing towards pilots of new tests currently underway in some areas of the country as a replacement.