Schools minister gave his backing to 'risky' Sats marking system

Schools Secretary Ed Balls personally backed the crisis-hit new marking system for Sats despite admitting it was a "risk", the Standard can reveal.

He sent a letter supporting the plan for an online results service that failed to work, delaying grades for 1.2 million children.

More than 100,000 children are thought to have started their summer holidays without knowing their results and will only discover their grades in September.

But just five weeks before pupils took their tests, Mr Balls wrote to the head of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority saying he was "encouraged" by the "improvements in marking quality" that would be made this year.

The letter to Ken Boston, dated 30 March, said: "I am particularly pleased with the improvements in the service to schools by providing electronic results."

The new online system should give teachers more detail about the marks pupils score on individual test questions to help children improve, he said.

Mr Balls added that "online systems, although they confer many benefits, are also subject to risk when first introduced".

However, he said he was pleased with plans 'for mitigating the risks' to the tests and asked to be 'kept informed' of progress. The electronic results system for nearly 10 million test papers failed to work as planned, meaning grades could not be returned to schools on time.

The Conservatives said the revelations "destroyed" the minister's claim that he was not involved in the Sats fiasco.

Mr Balls faced a grilling in the Commons yesterday over his handling of the case. He has already refused to apologise for the shambles, insisting that tests are run "at arm's length" from the Government.

Mr Balls has repeatedly insisted that the prime responsibility for Sats lies with the QCA, a government quango, and ETS Europe, the firm hired to run the tests.

But shadow children's secretary Michael Gove said: "This shows that Ed Balls was personally involved in monitoring the situation with this year's exams fiasco. It destroys any attempts ministers have made to claim they weren't involved in the debacle."

Mr Balls said he is just as "angry" and upset as parents, children and teachers.

He has insisted he is effectively powerless to intervene in what happens next because of legal and financial constraints.

The contract to run the tests was agreed between ETS Europe and the QCA, not ministers, according to Mr Balls. However, minutes of a crucial QCA board meeting also showed that officials at Mr Balls' department were "fully involved in the process" for hiring the new testing company.

The electronic results plan was hit by glitches from an early stage.

While test papers were marked by hand, every individual mark for every child was then entered in a data system via the ETS website, which automatically calculated overall grades.

Markers found this to be extremely slow and it became a major cause of the delays.

ETS Europe is likely to be questioned over what went wrong at a special hearing of a parliamentary the committee and has been warned it faces fines for failing to deliver results on time.

The QCA is in talks over what happens to the £156 million contract - which is due to run for another four years.

An independent inquiry has been launched into what went wrong.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Children said of the letter: "This is part of routine correspondence between ministers and the QCA. Of course the QCA keeps ministers informed whilst operating at arm's length."

Mr Balls has said the first time QCA told him the test results were going to be delayed was 1 July.