More primary schools are planning to run key stage 1 Sats this month compared with last year, despite now having to actively order the tests themselves.
The tests were made optional by the Department for Education in 2023, amid concerns over “anxiety” among young children, and replaced by the Reception Baseline Assessment.
Last year, the DfE automatically shared the tests for free - but this year, schools had to download them from a government portal or order hard copies online.
Some 38 per cent of teachers responding to a survey run by Teacher Tapp exclusively for Tes said that they will be using KS1 Sats to assess pupils this May, an increase of 5 percentage points on last year.
The number of respondents saying that they will use KS1 Sats to assess at a different point in the year declined significantly from 28 per cent last year to just 13 per cent this year.
Some 24 per cent of respondents said that they will use their own assessment in May - up from 15 per cent last year - according to the weighted poll of 2,482 primary school teachers.
A further 24 per cent said that they will not formally assess in May, compared with just 12 per cent last year.
Andrew Rigby, national director of education at REAch2 Academy Trust, said that KS1 Sats are “tried and tested, so it makes sense that schools might want to stick with something that works rather than reinvent the wheel”.
Despite the more than 60 primary schools within Mr Rigby’s trust planning to run the tests, he said that they “remain far from perfect” and questioned “why, as a profession, we are not more prepared to innovate and take risks - especially when we have been given the freedom to explore alternatives”.
He added: “We need to better understand whether schools are continuing to use these tests because they genuinely think this is the best way to do something, or whether sticking with the familiar simply feels like a safer way to navigate the already high levels of turbulence and uncertainty within the education system.”
Tiffnie Harris, primary specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, noted that “the fact [KS1 Sats] can be accessed free of charge is also relevant at a time when budgets are extremely tight” as a potential reason for this increase in their use this year.
She added that the non-mandatory KS1 Sats system “appears to be working well”.
The findings come ahead of Year 6 pupils across the country sitting mandatory KS2 Sats next week.
KS1 Sats can be ‘useful’
Despite KS1 Sats becoming optional last academic year after lengthy campaigning, several primary headteachers contacted by Tes for this article did not wish to comment due to the continued politicisation of the issue.
One primary headteacher who did agree to be quoted, Matt Morden, headteacher of Surrey Square Primary in South London, said that “KS1 Sats can play a useful role in supporting teacher assessment as long as they’re administered in a low-pressure way - without the stress of time limits”.
His school will be running the assessments this May as one of a number of teacher assessment tools.
Mr Morden added that the tests can be “reassuring for both staff and parents” but encouraged broader “ongoing teacher-led evaluations” and stressed that an over-reliance on any one type of assessment can be limiting.
James Bowen, assistant general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, which previously lobbied the government to remove the tests, said that the 48 per cent of schools who aren’t using the tests in May “suggests that while some schools find them useful as an optional tool to support their own assessments, many others are exploring different ways to assess their pupils at the end of KS1”.
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