Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department has made of the implications for its policies of the technical difficulties experienced by schools in accessing key stage 2 SATs results in the academic year 2021-22.

The department recognises that some schools experienced issues accessing their SATs results the morning they were released. We realise that this will have been frustrating for schools and we were in constant contact with our delivery partner Capita, to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. This meant that many schools had successfully accessed their results by lunchtime that day.

Capita has apologised to school leaders and teachers for the frustration that this caused and has committed to ensuring that this does not happen again.

The department is also aware that schools had separate issues accessing the national key stage 2 statistics on the same day, to be able to compare their individual results to the national average. We recognise this will have also been frustrating for schools and we worked quickly to make the national statistics available just over an hour later.

While the department does not consider this event to have any implication on return of results policy, the priority now will be to ensure this does not happen in future years.