A TEACHERS leader says increasing numbers of exams are not putting children under too much pressure.

Chairman of the Bolton Primary Headteacher Partnership, Glenys Evans, disagrees with research which claims children as young as four suffer emotional and physical problems from exam stress.

The Professional Association of Teachers research found that the most able children were tested at least 75 times.

However, Mrs Evans, headteacher at Claypool CP in Horwich, claimed that the baseline assessments for four and five-year-olds are completed in such a way that the children do not realise that they are even being tested.

She said: "They only gradually become aware that they are being tested and it's not a case of children being pressured in the primary sector.

"The children here look forward to sitting their SATS exams because they see it as a way of showing off what they can do.

"We speak to the parents when their children reach the age of seven and do the first set of SATS, so that nobody builds up any pressure.

"They don't know the exact date of the exams and just come in and do them as if they were coming to school in the normal way.

"Optional SATS for Years three, four and five are just a practice and there is no terrible pressure attached to them."

Mrs Evans feels the data produced by the SATS is vital as it provides a chance for children to measure their progress against their previous efforts and in comparison to their peers, it provides national information on how well that particular age group is doing and allows a school to check their success in comparison with children from another catchment area of the same age.

She added: "When I became a teacher 30 years ago there was no way of knowing how I was doing, how a school was doing and how the LEA was doing and I would never want to go back to that situation.

"I know parents who have moved to Wales or Scotland from Bolton and they have no idea how to choose a school for their children because there is no data on any of the schools."

At secondary school level, changes heralded in a recent Green Paper will give pupils an alternative to piling up ten or more GCSEs.

Deputy director of education at Bolton LEA, Brian Shaw, said: "I do question the number of exams 16-year-olds are now taking.

"I think the Government will certainly introduce the module option instead of GCSEs which will relieve the pressure.

"But at primary level, the SATS have been very useful to the Government in terms of showing improvements, especially somewhere like Bolton which has had such outstanding results over the past few years."