The event was organised in Westminster by More Than A Score.
Parliamentarians in the United Kingdom recently sat for a year six SAT exam and actually scored less than Britain's average 10-year-olds, The Guardian reported. The event was organised in Westminster by More Than A Score, a campaign that advocates for the scrapping of unnecessary tests. The exam was invigilated by 11-year-olds and was taken by MPs including Commons education select committee chair Robin Walker.
"The pressure in the room is palpable as MPs sit the #SATs exam in Westminster under the exact conditions Year 6's experience #BSSI" the campaign group wrote on Twitter.
As per The Guardian, only 44 percent of the cross-party group of parliamentarians dubbed the Westminster Class of 2022 achieved the expected standard in maths, while about 50 percent scored the standard in English grammar, punctuation and spelling.
This is far below what the children achieve in the United Kingdom. As per the outlet, this year, 59 percent of 10 and 11-year-olds reached the expected standard in the SATS test of maths, reading and writing. But in 2019, the last time this test was conducted, a higher number of students - 65 percent - achieved the expected score.
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More Than A Score hopes that the politicians will take this high-pressure experience away with them and realise that "the exams only judge schools but do not help children's learning" at that age.
But while the campaign may not have successfully convinced MPs altogether to scrap the tests, it did make them acknowledge the pressure children face. Robin Walker acknowledged a need to reform exams for 10 to 11-year-olds. "There will always be a place for testing but that cannot be the be-all and end-all to accessing the most opportunity. Ultimately, it's not just about testing but it's how we develop their love of reading," he said as per the outlet.