Children who fail exams at the end of primary school will have to resit them the following year, in an effort to ensure pupils are “secondary ready”, the Conservatives are to announce as part their general election campaign push on education.



The resits would apply to about 100,000 11- or 12-year-olds in England who leave primary school with inadequate levels of literacy and maths skills, based on their performance in key stage two standardised exams.

Under the new Tory policy, from September 2016 pupils deemed to have failed to reach the required levels will have two chances to sit retakes, administered by their secondary schools. The policy will be outlined by the education secretary, Nicky Morgan.

But critics said the new tests would be redundant and could act as a powerful disincentive against state secondary schools taking pupils with weak key stage 2 results because of the extra workload and pressure on results.

But Morgan said the aim of the new test was to stop children being “written off” too early by poor results at primary school.

“We know that the biggest predictor of success at GCSE is whether young people have mastered the basics at age 11. That means if we fail to get it right for young people at the start of secondary school they’ll struggle for the rest of their time in education,” she said.

“Under Labour, one in three children left primary school unable to read, write and add up properly. Thanks to our reforms and teachers’ hard work, we’ve seen that fall to just one in five.

“But even one child falling behind, or being written off, is a child too many. That’s why the next Conservative government will require schools to enter any child who doesn’t have the literacy and numeracy skills they need to succeed in secondary school for new year seven resit tests that will guarantee they’ve caught up.”



Tristram Hunt, the shadow education secretary, said the policy was “a desperate attempt” to distract from Conservative failures on school standards.

“On their watch, 1.6 million pupils are being educated in schools that are less than good. And, as a result of David Cameron’s unqualified teachers policy, more than 400,000 pupils are being taught by unqualified teachers,” Hunt said.

“Labour has a better plan for education. We will ensure that every teacher is qualified or working towards qualified teacher status, and introduce a new master teacher status to raise the standing of the teaching profession. That is how we improve education for every child in every classroom.”

Christine Blower, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said the resits would be totally unnecessary and at odds with government policy giving autonomy to schools.

“It is simply hard to see – other than an obsession with testing and metrics – what possible value there is in doing this,” she said.

Russell Hobby, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the new policy was “a threadbare approach, that ‘if it moves, test it’,” adding: “This policy has confused teaching and testing, and thinks that tests improve teaching.”

A Conservative spokesman said it was expected that 80% of those sitting the resits in English and maths would pass, and that those who continued to fail would not be held back to repeat year seven.

Failure rates in the resits would be a “red flag”, he said, with the data published as part of school performance tables. Ofsted inspectors will be expected to use the results as part of school assessments.

“There is no job that doesn’t require English and maths and this is about making sure every child gets the best start in life and that our country can compete in the world,” David Cameron said, backing the new tests.

The resits set by the Department for Education’s standards and testing agency would be a “slimmed down” exam of year six English and maths but would include some material from the year seven secondary school courses. Pupils taking resits would still be taught in their usual year group.

Schools will be able to enter students twice if needed for the new tests, in either spring or summer term of year seven. Pupils with special educational needs that prevented them from achieving the required standard will be exempt.

Secondary schools currently receive £500 in catchup funding per pupils for those who arrive without having met the expected standard in year six.

“We recognise that secondary schools have to do a lot of work to pick up the results of some of the less able children coming from primary schools,” the Conservative spokesman said.

Of the 100,000 children who fail to reach the expected standard in English and maths at 11, only 7% went on to gain five good GCSEs including those two subjects, compared with 72% who made the grade at the end of primary school, according to DfE figures.

