Teachers not permitted to see marking schemes?

[StepAwayFromCake]

I picked up a newspaper in a waiting room yesterday (Daily Telegraph, IIRC) and saw a tiny article claiming that teachers would no longer be allowed to see the marking scheme for SPAG assessments. This was apparently to reduce stress on them.

Surely I misread? It really does not make any sense to me. I can't find anything about it online (and I was in a lot of pain in that waiting room).

Is this true?

It's partly true. The spag SATs paper has been released, as has the mark scheme. However, markers had a much more detailed mark scheme, which the dfe is refusing to release as apparently it would put stress in teachers. This more detailed marked scheme includes things like how big a semi colon should be, how close together the dot and the comma should be etc.

This has all come to light as when checking papers, teachers have found that children have been marked incorrectly despite putting a clearly recognisable semi colon in the correct place, and the reasons for this are in the 'secret' extra mark scheme.

They are saying it doesn't need to be released as teachers will teach to the test and the curriculum is wider than that. However only one way will be considered correct.... and we're not allowed to know how they decide which are correct and which are not.

What makes it all the more complicated is that the people marking the spag papers are themselves year 6 teachers, and get to see the secret extra mark scheme, surely putting them at an advantage.

It's all a bit of a joke really.