Making accurate, manageable assessments of children's scientific understanding, skills and progress is one of the biggest challenges facing primary teachers. In Wales, where Statutory Assessment Tests (SATs) at age 11 were phased out in 2005, teacher assessment has been the only source of pupil attainment data in science for a much longer period…

In 1989, the progressive introduction of a National Curriculum of subjects to all maintained schools in England and Wales brought compulsory science education into the primary sectors of these two countries for the first time. Such was its considered importance, science was placed alongside English and mathematics in what became known simply as…