To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate his Department has made of the total cost of administering SATS at (a) Key Stage 1 and (b) Key Stage 2.
Answered on
16 April 2019
The national curriculum assessment (NCA) key stage 1 (KS1) and end-of-key stage 2 (KS2) tests (commonly known as SATs) are developed and delivered by the Standards and Testing Agency (STA), an executive agency of the Department for Education.
The following is an estimation of the costs to the STA to administer the KS1 and KS2 tests in a typical financial year, based on actual costs incurred by the STA in financial year 2018-19:
KS1 tests: £4,318,861
KS2 tests: £30,240,602
Phonics Screening Check: £681,399
Centralised costs: £7,733,041
Centralised costs cannot be directly attributed to particular tests. This is because many elements of the STA’s test development and delivery resources and processes are centralised across all tests to ensure efficiency and value for money. Centralised costs include work on other areas of STA’s remit, such as professional skills tests for teachers and new assessments currently in the development and pilot phase.