Assessment
The governing body is responsible for the overall performance of the school. The governing body must have access to the information required to monitor and evaluate achievement and to both support and challenge the headteacher and professional colleagues in their important work.
The NGA believes that schools should not be judged on absolute results in assessment tests and public examinations. Even tests that attempt to take value added performance into account are flawed, because they cannot measure important aspects of a child's educational experience.
Despite some improvements since their introduction the current primary tests are still not sufficiently diagnostic about an individual child's progress, and they have led to a system of test preparation and cramming for ten year old children in too many schools that the NGA believes is unacceptable.
For these reasons the NGA is opposed to league tables - even those showing value added performance. However, the association also believes that parents are entitled to know how their child's school is performing.
Therefore the NGA would like to see the current system of tests and league tables replaced by a national system of diagnostic tests allied to the publication of a school 'grade', based on a comparison with schools in similar circumstances.