Pupils being persuaded to come into school during Easter holidays for 'crammer' Sats courses to boost schools' performance in league tables

Easter holiday Sats “cramming” courses are on the rise, a union has warned, as headteachers attempt to boost their school’s league table performance.

Hundreds of schools are now “persuading” parents to send their children in for several days during the holidays, as they seek to get an edge on other local schools by outdoing their results.

Key Stage Two Sats, which are sat in May by pupils in their final year of primary school, test children on spelling, punctation, grammar, maths and science.

While it is common for schools to put on extra lessons for GCSE or A-level students during the Easter holidays, revision classes for eleven-year-olds is a more recent phenomenon.

Darren Northcott, the national official for education at the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), said that the rise in Easter revision courses for Sats could be linked to the introduction of tougher Sats in May 2016.

He said that while it is in a student’s best interest to get good GCSE and A-level grades, this is not the case for Sats where an average score is taken for the year group and results are used as an accountability measure for schools.

“If you go back, let’s say in the last decade, you really didn’t hear of any [primary] schools doing this,” he said. “It is something that’s become increasingly prevalent.

“Schools think that this is going to give them an edge in getting the results they need - that’s what lies at the heart of it.”

Earlier this week, Jeremy Corbyn pledged to abolish Sats is he is elected as Prime Minister, a move which ministers said would cause  “enormous damage” to education and undo decades of improvement in children’s numeracy and literacy.

Mr Northcott, a former Year Six teacher, said that Easter revision courses are generally run by schools that feel insecure about their league table position compared to others in the local area.

He said: “Where is the evidence that spending time over the Easter holiday - effectively cramming - for a Sat is going to make a pupils result any better than they otherwise would be?”

Angela Rayner, Labour’s shadow education secretary, said that Easter revision classes for Year Six pupils is “just the latest example of the impact that the current SATs regime is having on children, teachers and schools”.

She added: “A Labour government will support our schools to teach a wider range of subjects, knowledge and skills, instead of just teaching to the test.

“Replacing the current system will reduce the burden of testing on children and teachers, encourage a broad curriculum and separate the assessment of schools from the assessment of children as young as seven”.