“If something matters, you check that it’s all ok”

The education secretary, Damian Hinds, has referenced the importance of regular sight and dental appointments in an opinion piece explaining the purpose of primary school testing.

Mr Hinds wrote the Sunday Telegraph piece in response to calls for assessment to be removed from primary schools.

As part of the article, Mr Hinds compares educational testing in primary school to regular health checks.

“Most of us go to the dentist and the optician to have our teeth and eyes checked on a regular basis…If something matters, you check that it’s all ok,” he wrote.

He emphasised the importance of checking that children are literate and numerate by the time that they leave primary school.

“This is why it worries me deeply when I hear calls for primary school tests to be scrapped. Imagine if the Government announced that it was going to ban dental checks or stop opticians checking our eyesight. People would be rightly horrified,” Mr Hinds emphasised.