Minister Cancels Leaked Primary Spelling Test

[mikey4444]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-36108449

How on earth has this happened ? You would have thought that this would have been checked at least twice, if not three times, before publication !

[Tilly2]

The spell checker wasn't working.

[Prudie]

It's pathetic and happens because managers don't manage. I'm guessing this will have been loaded inadvertently by a 'lower' member of the team.

[mikey4444]

Prudie....you are probably correct. Some Manager signed this off without looking at it properly.

Its an almighty cock-up though, and I wonder what the monetary cost of all this will be ?

[bhg481]

mikey - surely it will be a saving, won't it? No costs for marking, analysing the results etc.

[mikey4444]

BHG...yes, in the short term but I am supposing that these tests will have to be re-run.

[Tilly2]

They have cancelled the test for this year. There will not be a re-run.

[mikey4444]

Thanks Tilly !

[Old_Geezer]

How can you have a written spelling test ?

Q1. Spell "parsimonious" without looking to see how we spelt it in the question.
Q2. Spell "auspicious" without looking to see how we spelt it in the question.
Q3. ...

[Old_Geezer]

No wonder they all got 100%.

[Tilly2]

The teacher reads out the words and the pupils write them down.

[mikey4444]

I could never spell neccasaasry when we had these tests in school back in the 50's and 60's....and I still can't !

[Tilly2]

We didn't have SATS in the 50's and 60's, just weekly spelling tests.

[fiction-factory]

I wonder if they allow for a teacher's accent or mispronunciations or pupils hearing- eg terraced/terrorist, practice/practise. I think they read a sentence out but the "he lives in a terraced/terrorist house" misunderstanding can still occur

[jno]

not really the sort of thing you'd check ("Now, let's just see if we've inadvertently published our exam papers in advance"). Probably someone just left a piece of paper/software in the wrong basket. It shows that their procedures need tightening, but that's something you never know until it goes wrong. No need for the minister to resign on this occasion.

[jno]

practice/practise is about spelling, not pronunciation, ff?

[Old_Geezer]

Not really a test paper then, that.

[fiction-factory]

Agreed. And I missed the apostrophe off PUPILS'. I meant to include a category of homophones/dual spellings.

[jno]

I suppose technically, something published online isn't a paper until you print it out, OG. But eventually a teacher would probably have done so.

[mikey4444]

Can anyone find this list of words for the test ?.......it would be interesting what the words were !

[fiction-factory]

It is a test paper, O_G. The teacher has a list of sentences to read out. The pupils have a test paper containing a list of sentences with a gap in which they have to write the word that they need to spell.
Here's an example from Key Stage 2 (end of primary)
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/327298/2014_KS2_L35_English_GPS_spelling_task_DIGITALHO.pdf