Examining England's National Curriculum assessments: an analysis of the KS2 reading test questions, 1993–2004

Abstract

The Year 6 National Curriculum reading test has become a familiar and established annual experience at the end of the primary phase in schools throughout England. From 1993 onwards, each year the national reading test for 11-year-olds has consisted of a different set of texts, accompanied by a different set of questions. With over a decade's accumulation of national assessment materials, the National Foundation for Educational Research decided to fund a project to take stock of the reading test, scrutinise what children have been expected to do over the years, and track the evolution of the assessment. A new taxonomy of question focuses, introduced by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority in 2003, provided the opportune moment to conduct a retrospective re-categorisation of all the questions that had ever appeared in a Key Stage 2 reading test. This paper reports on that exercise and reveals that some forms of questioning remain constant and reappear every year, while others are subject to variation.