THE utter fury felt by many teachers at the SATs tests marking fiasco is highlighted today in a letter sent by a Worcester head to his local MP. Neil Morris, the headteacher at the city’s Christopher Whitehead Language College, launches a scathing attack on the delays and inaccuracies surrounding the marking by American firm ETS in his letter to Mike Foster.

Mr Morris says the farce is “immoral”. He describes marking as incompetent and complains that some markers had no experience either of marking exams or of the subjects they have been asked to mark. He likens it to asking schoolboys to referee Premier League football matches.

Mr Morris says teachers at his school were in tears when the results arrived on the last day of term, describes the SATs tests as “worthless” and a “charade”, accuses the Government of turning schools into exam factories, and says he is in despair. It is a remarkable attack by a well-respected headteacher who has clearly had enough.

ETS is getting £156m of our money over five years – and it has presided over a total shambles.

Yet the problems with SATs go far beyond this year’s marking problems.

We would question the wisdom of persevering with these tests at all.

Other than providing data for school league tables that are divisive and demoralising, what do SATs achieve that assessment by teachers cannot?

Children in Wales stopped sitting these tests three years ago. League tables are no longer published. And yet the academic performance of pupils is better than ever.

There is a lesson to be learned from our Celtic cousins.