Sats marking contract cancelled after exam marking chaos
Updated on 15 August 2008
Exams authority the QCA has ended its contract with ETS Europe, the US company at the centre of this summer's Sats marking fiasco.
The QCA announced this morning that the five-year contract had been ended with immediate effect and by "mutual consent".
Under the terms of the deal, ETS Europe will pay the QCA £19.5m, and cancel invoices worth around £4.6m. The 2008 test contract was worth £39.5m.
The QCA will not have to pay ETS for any future years. It had been feared that the QCA would have to pay ETS to end the contract early.
Channel 4 News reported markers' concerns over the lateness and inaccuracy of results in June.
Last month schools minister Jim Knight announced that Lord Sutherland would chair an inquiry into the marking fiasco.
Full results were still not available when delayed results for keys stage three tests, taken by 14-year-olds, were released earlier this week. Schools have received 95 per cent of key stage three results, although the figure drops to 93 per cent in key stage three English.
Ninety nine per cent of key stage two results, taken by seven-year-olds, are now available.
'Ministers bear direct responsibility for signing up with a firm that let down children and teachers so badly.'Michael Gove, shadow schools secretary
In a statement, Ken Boston, the chief executive of the QCA, said: "ETS Europe was selected due to the strength of their worldwide experience in delivering large scale assessments.
"It is disappointing that the issues with this year's national curriculum test results have meant that the partnership between QCA and ETS Europe must end early."
Zoubir Yazid, the managing director of ETS Global BV, said: "ETS Europe has apologised to schools for the delays in marking national curriculum assessments in England.
"As a subsidiary of a global, non-profit company, we are dedicated to assuring quality and equity for all pupils, and we are sorry that the results this summer were delayed for some schools. However, we would argue that the quality of the marking is high, due to the stringent new checks that we introduced this year."
The schools secretary Ed Balls today said in a letter to Barry Sheerman, chair of the education select committee, that the legal element of the contractual discussions had been a matter for the QCA and ETS.
As part of the termination agreement, ETS would continue to cooperate with the National Assessment Agency and QCA to complete this year's marking process.
The Tory education spokesperson, Michael Gove, said the announcement was "long overdue".
"ETS had a long history of international failure before they were signed up by this Government to run SATs tests," he said. "Ministers bear direct responsibility for signing up with a firm that let down children and teachers so badly."
The Lib Dem schools spokesperson, Annette Brooke, said ETS "demonstrated pure incompetence when it came to marking this year's SATs".
