THE Conservatives yesterday announced plans to scrap controversial Sats tests for all 11-year-olds in England if they form the next government.

Shadow Schools Secretary Michael Gove said he would abolish the key stage two exams and replace them with national tests in the first year of secondary school.

He said axing the exams, which were “increasingly discredited”, would allow an assessment system that better served the needs of children and would free up teaching.

Schools Minister Vernon Coaker attacked the proposals as a “huge step backwards for school accountability”

and said they were “half-baked”.

The proposals gained a mixed reaction from teaching unions, with the National Association of Head Teachers and the National Union of Teachers (NUT), which plan to boycott next year’s tests, welcoming them. But the NASUWT, which does not support the boycott, said the Tories’ announcement would have “appalling” implications for teachers.

Mr Gove said testing pupils at the beginning of secondary school and allowing teachers to mark exams internally would free the last year of primary school for broader teaching.

It would also allow a “more rigorous”

assessment of how schools were performing in preparing children for their secondary education.

He told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show: “We want to make sure we have a system of testing and assessment which actually serves the interests of children.”

And he denied moving the tests would mean parents would not be able to accurately gauge how well their children were doing.

Last month, Schools Secretary Ed Balls accepted a review body’s recommendation that Sats science tests for 11-year-olds be abolished in favour of teacher assessment.

But the review expert group said maths and English tests were useful to parents and should remain.

Mr Balls scrapped Sats for 14- year-olds in England last October after a fiasco over the marking of exam papers, but they remain for seven and 11-year-olds.

Mr Coaker said: “If Michael Gove is proposing to push the tests back to year seven in secondary school and not publish the results for each primary school, this will be a huge step backwards for school accountability and will deny parents information we know they find valuable.”

Chris Keates, of the NASUWT said: ‘‘If the obsessive opponents of the Sats think that this announcement would solve their problems with testing they should think again. This would be the worst of all worlds.”

But John Bangs, of the NUT, said: “This is an imaginative proposal that we are giving a cautious welcome to.” But he added: “We want to see some more detail on this because at the moment this could just be moving the problem rather than solving it.”