The Department for Education has reported a fall in the proportion of SATs marks that prompted reviews of marking this year.
New figures released today show that in 2018, review applications were made for 1 per cent of total tests taken at key stage 2, down from 1.4 per cent last year.
The proportion of review applications decreased in English (2.6 per cent to 2.1 per cent) and in spelling, punctuation and grammar (1.1 per cent to 0.3 per cent).
However, there was a rise in maths, from 0.5 per cent of tests taken in 2017 to 0.6 per cent this year.
This year, 11.2 per cent of reading review applications, 17.9 per cent of maths review applications and 14.3 per cent of SPAG review applications were successful, up from 7.3 per cent, 10.5 per cent and 10.4 per cent respectively last year.
However, the DfE claims this year’s figures are not comparable because of a change this year to the criteria used by the government to determine whether a marking review is successful.
Previously, a review was considered successful if the review resulted in a change of three marks or more. From this year, that threshold changed to two marks.
Just three applications resulted in a change from “achieving the expected standard” to “not achieving the expected standard”.
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