Abolish SATs. They measure nothing that matters and damage the children taking them.

I have watched ten year olds cry in the toilets before a SATs paper.

I have watched bright, curious kids start to hate school in year six because for months everything they do is either "practice" or "performance". I have watched schools restructure entire terms around boosting results for children who are already anxious enough about not being good enough.

What do SATs actually tell us? They tell us which children are good at a very specific kind of short, timed, written assessment under pressure. They tell us almost nothing about whether a child can think, reason, create, collaborate, or enjoy learning. And because they are high-stakes for schools, they warp everything around them — hours of "booster sessions", scripted teaching, creative subjects sidelined because "theres no time".

Here is the proposal. Abolish SATs at the end of primary school. Replace them with a light-touch teacher-moderated assessment that feeds into the secondary handover but isnt used for league tables. Keep some sample-based national testing for system monitoring, but take it away from individual schools so theres no incentive to drill.

Finland does this. They trust their teachers. Their children read better than ours by the end of primary school. This is not a radical experiment. It is what every country with a healthier education system does.

The last thing I will say is this. I have been teaching for fourteen years. I have never once met a parent who valued their childs SATs result over their childs wellbeing. The only people who value SATs are the people who use them to rank us.