Secondary schools won’t be able to access the breakdowns of pupils’ SATs scores for their incoming year 7s until Friday afternoon. The results were released on Thursday morning after a nine-day delay, following technical issues with contractor Pearson’s marking and data systems. In previous years secondary schools have downloaded full results directly from the assessment results’ portal. But today they can only see whether each pupil meets the expected standard or not. The Standards and Testing Agency (STA) confirmed that scaled scores would be available for secondary schools from 12pm on Friday “once the necessary system updates are applied”. Schools can access results by logging into the National Curriculum Assessments (NCA) portal. The portal, overseen by Pearson on a £130 million contract, was launched this year. Pearson is managing SATs this year after it won back the contract from Capita. Tom Middlehurst, the deputy policy director at the school leaders’ union ASCL, called for an “urgent explanation”. “Secondary schools use this information to assist with a smooth transition to secondary education and this has already been hampered by the delay to the release of SATs results. “It goes without saying that this is the last thing that schools need, given that we are at the end of term, and indeed schools in some areas have already broken up.” Lack of understanding Scaled SATs scores are used to help secondary schools plan interventions for certain pupils and ensure a smooth transition from primary to secondary education. Robert Massey, the head of school standards at Twyford CE Academies Trust, said the situation showed the “complete lack of understanding” of how important the data is for secondary schools. “Having access to the scaled scores/marks is crucial to us and most secondary schools as we try to triangulate as much information as possible for our new students so we can get off to an ambitious and purposeful start to key stage 3 with them in September. The lack of information on specific marks risked secondary schools entering the new school year without the information they needed to plan interventions for pupils, arranging sets and other groupings and “have an objective measure of each pupil’s’s prior attainment”. Basic information on whether a pupil met the expected standard “gives no indication of their relative strength”, leaving many schools with no way to identify those who needed more intensive support. ‘Not feasible’ When Twyford contacted the DfE helpline, it was advised to contact the feeder primary schools directly to get the specific data. The four secondary schools within the trust have an average of 46 feeder primaries per school. Massey said: “The suggestion that it is feasible for secondary schools to obtain transfer files from a large number of feeder primary schools shows little understanding from the DfE of the challenges that this would pose in a normal year when SAT results are not delayed. “With this year’s delay this is even more of an impossible task.” Ofsted Christine Gilbert will lead an independent review into this year’s SATs failings and whether a new model is needed. Pearson was contacted for comment.