Key stage tests for children in their final year of primary school should be abandoned, the Conservatives said yesterday. Pupils should instead be assessed in the first year of secondary education.

The national curriculum tests, known as SATs, should also be marked by teachers rather than an outside body and the results used to identify poorly performing primary schools, Michael Gove, the Shadow Schools Secretary, said.

“We would free the final year [in primary schools] for teaching in the broadest sense to ensure that children had access to the most broad curriculum possible. When they arrive at secondary school we find out genuinely how well they have been taught, how effectively they can read, how gifted they are at maths,” Mr Gove said.

The proposal divided teaching unions. The most outspoken criticism came from the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers, whose general secretary, Chris Keates, said the plan was “appalling” and would perpetuate school league tables and impose a new bureaucratic burden on secondary school teachers who marked the examinations. John Bangs, of the National Union of Teachers, called the move imaginative, but urged the Conservatives to go farther and scrap the tests rather than delay them.

Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: “The Tories’ proposals are akin to moving deckchairs on the Titanic. Moving tests from the end of primary to the beginning of secondary school makes little difference to pupils or parents.”

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that the plan had merit and might make the transition to secondary school smoother, but said that administering the tests would add to the workload in secondary schools.

Ministers also attacked the Tory plan, saying that it marked a “damaging step backwards for school accountability”.

Vernon Coaker, the Schools Minister, said: “We are already making changes to national curriculum tests based on the advice of the Expert Group, which recommended moving the tests from May to June but said that externally marked tests were vital to school accountability.”

He added: “If Michael Gove is proposing to still publish the results for each primary school, but have the tests done and marked by teachers in secondary school, this will be a less reliable, less accurate and less effective testing system than the one our Expert Group is proposing.”

Mr Gove said that he believed that the proposed system would be less expensive to operate than the present arrangement because it would not involve external examiners. He added that his plans would be forwarded to teachers for consultation.

The Government is already under fire because of the Sats system. Two of Britain’s biggest teaching unions are planning to boycott the tests next year, complaining that children are taught only what they need to pass the tests, at the expense of a wider education.

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