WORCESTERSHIRE heads who spoke out against the chaos of this year's Sats have been vindicated after a government climbdown on some of its unpopular reforms.

Education Secretary Justine Greening yesterday scrapped a plan to make pupils failing maths and reading Sats resit them in year 7 at secondary school and promised not to change the assessments for two years.

She told schools a highly-criticised grammar paper would be voluntary next year and said improvements would be made to the way assessments were moderated.

Schools were also reassured the results from this year's tougher tests would not be used alone to judge their performance.

This year's Sats were the first tests since changes to the National Curriculum, which the government believes were needed to raise the bar across the country.

But Worcestershire's headteachers had spoken out including Kate Brunt, executive principal at the Rivers Trust Academy, who said teachers had been in the dark about the tests just months before pupils were due to sit them.

She said children were left in tears by difficult papers and the emphasis on grammar was killing creativity.

Anne Potter, head at Stanley Road Primary School, later blamed Worcestershire's poor results on the tests being too hard and said the process had been stressful and demoralising.

Today, Mrs Brunt said: "It's good to see the government has listened to the practitioners and they realise that retesting our pupils three months after going through a very challenging transition won't be beneficial to the school or to the child.

"Money would be better spent doing catch up programmes to support children's learning."

She added: "It is good to know that the government have listened to the profession and have taken into account that consistency across the country in moderation of writing in particular isn't uniform.

"Furthermore, it is very difficult to be judged on standards that weren't given to teachers until February half-term.

"Additionally, pupils were being assessed on a four year curriculum after two years.

"It is good to see the government aren't changing assessment arrangements again for this year so that there will be some stability for teachers."

The Trust includes Northwick Manor primary, St Clements CE Primary, Cranham Primary, in Worcester, and Cutnall Green CE First, Great Witley Primary and St Peter's CE First, in Droitwich as well as Heronswood Primary in Kidderminster.

Sean Devlin, principal at Blessed Edward Oldcorne Catholic College, said he was pleased his pupils would not be expected to resit exams in their first year.

He said: "They would have been seen as starting secondary school as failures.

"It's far better to have a comprehensive catch up literacy and numeracy programme in place which most schools already do."