Education is too important to fall victim to Government chaos

The Department for Education, no stranger to bureaucratic foul-ups, is fast becoming a parody of itself. Among its official penumbra it seems to harbour a “rogue marker”, apparently set on a one-woman or one-man war on the policy of testing primary school children.

Not that they needed to, given the mess the department has already made of the assessments. Asking 10-year-old children about subjunctives and making them cry en masse is not the sort of achievement that ministers presumably had in mind when they set out to push standards higher.

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan and her schools minister Nick Gibb are fast losing what little confidence parents and teachers may have had in their ability to deliver coherent policies. However, they may wish to apportion blame between them, the final responsibility for recent fiascos lies firmly with the secretary of state.

Justifiably, and wisely, she recently undertook one of the most dramatic of U-turns on the forced academisation of schools. Common sense in that case prevailed, but not before the Government had held itself up to ridicule for it rigidly doctrinaire approach, one that Ms Morgan went to the headteachers’ union’s conference to try to defend. Now it is her career that stands in jeopardy.

It need not have been this way, for there is a broad consensus about the right approach to testing younger children. Most parents agree that testing is a legitimate form of assessment. Most teachers, too – though they are more circumspect about accepting that Sats tests results are in fact as much a test of their teaching as of the ability of their pupils to learn.

Ministers must wonder whether some of the extremes of homework and testing rigour being explored are entirely necessary. They may look back on their own schooldays and recall exactly how punishing their work schedules were; chances are they were not as exacting as those they are now inflicting on children.

The danger in all this is that all these bungles and acts of sabotage, if that is what they are, will discredit the entire system of testing, which would be a deeply damaging consequence. Education is simply too important a matter to be allowed to fall into chaos as it has recently. Either Ms Morgan gets a grip or she should make way for someone who can.