Can MPs and peers do better than 11-year-olds in English and maths SATs? They’ll find out when they join the Big SATs Sit-In in Westminster today (Tuesday 6 December).

Under the same exam conditions faced by year 6 pupils, parliamentarians will test their knowledge of fronted adverbials and long division. The tests will be invigilated by year 6 pupils from Surrey Square Primary School in London who will strictly enforce the rules of no talking, no calculators and no Googling.

MPs confirmed for the event — Parliamentary business permitting — include: Robin Walker (Conservative, chair of the Education Select Committee), Emma Hardy (Labour, Hull), Flick Drummond (Conservative, Meon Valley), Ian Byrne (Labour, Liverpool), Margaret Greenwood (Labour, Wirral), Navendu Mishra (Labour, Stockport), Gagan Mahindra (Conservative, SW Hertfordshire) Emma Lewell Buck (Labour, South Shields). They will be joined by a group of cross-party peers. After the papers are marked, the Westminster class of 2022 will be told if they have collectively “reached the expected standard” required by the Department for Education.

The event has been organised by campaign group More Than A Score to highlight the consequences of the high-pressure, high-stakes nature of SATs. As well as Westminster, Big SATs Sit-Ins will take place in dozens of schools around the country including Brighton, Birmingham, Cheshire, Essex, Whitley Bay and London.

Alison Ali from More Than A Score comments, “This is more than a test of maths and English capabilities, it’s an opportunity for MPs to put themselves in the shoes of 10- and 11-year-olds being tested under GCSE-style exam conditions. They will see how absurd some of the questions faced by children are, how these absurdities influence and narrow the whole curriculum, and how they are only used to judge schools, not to help children’s learning. We want them to question: is this the right way to measure what children can really do? Is it the fairest, most accurate way to judge school performance?”

In 2022, 41% of year 6 children were told they had not “reached the expected standard” before starting secondary school. More Than A Score argues that being labelled a failure is the wrong way to begin secondary school and that spending most of year 6 cramming for SATs does not encourage a love of learning.

Parents and headteachers agree: according to research in September 2022*, only 8% strongly support current government policy on primary testing and headteachers believe preparing for SATs and other tests should be bottom of their priorities in the classroom. Meanwhile 60% of parents agree that the high-pressure nature of the tests harm children’s mental health.

Matt Morden, headteacher of Surrey Square Primary School comments, “Like many schools, we do everything we can to reduce the stress placed on children by SATs. But, of course, they feel the pressure of the exam conditions on the day. SATs will never show all that our pupils have learned and they will never give a full picture of our school performance.”

Emma Hardy MP, who is attending the event, comments, “I feel it is important to do the SATs paper this year to put myself in the situation of a Year 6 pupil to experience the pressure they are under. It’s definitely time to review the way primary school children are assessed and primary schools are measured. Testing children under exam conditions in a narrow range of subjects doesn’t always support children’s learning, can often harm their wellbeing and isn’t the best way to give a full picture of how well a school is performing.”