Marking Sats has always been a total fiasco
The Sats disaster is depressing, but I’m afraid that as someone who’s marked them for ten years, it’s not altogether surprising. In the early days of the National Curriculum tests — the Sats — I was a Key Stage 2 Science marker, sworn to Masonic-like secrecy about this mysterious testing process. In my innocence I had expected it to be a straightforward procedure, but I hadn’t allowed for the serial incompetence, the human error, the vagaries of postal deliveries, and most important: the political pressure.