A lower proportion of key stage 2 tests were put forward for re-marks this year compared to last year, but a smaller proportion of appeals were successful, data released this morning shows.
Applications for re-marks for English reading, mathematics, spelling, punctuation and spelling dropped from 1.9 per cent last year to 1.4 per cent this year overall, according to a report from the Standards and Testing Agency (STA).
But the proportion of re-marks that were successful fell by 1.3 percentage points this year compared with last year.
There was a fall in requests for re-marks across all subjects.
The biggest drop in requests for re-marks was for the English reading test, which dropped a whole 1.2 percentage points, from 3.8 per cent last year to just 2.6 per cent this year.
However that test saw many more appeals than the other two, with 15,420 submitted for English reading compared with 6,244 for grammar, punctuation and spelling and 2,990 for maths.
Like the reading test, there was also a slight drop in re-mark applications for the grammar, punctuation and spelling test. This fell 0.1 percentage points from 1.2 per cent of total tests taken to 1.1 per cent this year.
Maths saw the lowest proportion of applications for re-marks, at just 0.5 per cent of tests. This was a 0.2 percentage point decrease on 2016.
At the same time, the proportion of re-marks that were successful fell, from 9.8 per cent of applications being successful last year compared to 8.5 per cent this year.
An application for a re-mark is considered “successful” if it results in a change in a pupil achieving the expected standard, or a change of three or more marks.
Across all subjects, successful re-marks fell. Only 7.4 per cent of applications for English reading re-marks were successful, compared to 8.6 per cent last year.
Meanwhile 10.3 per cent of grammar, punctuation and spelling applications for re-marks were successful, a drop from 12 per cent this year before.
Finally, 10.5 per cent of maths test re-mark applications were successful – still a fall from 12.6 per cent last year, but meaning maths saw the highest success rate for re-marks out of all subjects.
This was the second year that pupils in year 6 were tested against the current national curriculum, which was introduced in September 2014. Schools were able to apply for re-marks from July.
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