PARENTS of children at six city schools have been told their children's exam results this year will not reflect their ability.

Headteachers from the Headington Partnership – made up of Cheney School and Bayard's Hill, St Andrew's, Windmill, Wood Farm, Headington Quarry primary schools, as well as Oxfordshire Hospital School – wrote to parents yesterday to warn them ahead of Year Two and Year Six pupils taking national tests known as SATS next month.

The headteachers warned changes to the tests meant children in Year Six would be taking them based on the new curriculum for the final four years of primary school despite having only learnt that curriculum for the past two years.

They also criticised the Government for the way it had introduced the new tests.

Windmill Primary School headteacher Lynn Knapp said: "The whole process has been a bit of a fiasco.

"We have been teaching in the dark and nobody will understand the outcomes anyway.

"There are people in Whitehall who do not understand children and learning and want to take it back to the way the education they had.

"Education has moved on and the things the Government is putting in are not giving children the skills they need, they are just putting them in boxes."

Yesterday the National Association of Head Teachers also criticised the SATS, which they said were poorly designed.

The Government has also been criticised for introducing the tests for seven-year-olds and for their focus on what some claim is rote learning.

Mrs Knapp said the Headington Partnership had serious concerns about the direction English education was moving in.

She said: "We are fed up with the way education is going and we are not going to set back and take it without speaking out.

"I would like to think that we will see more of this sort of action, we need to discuss what the Government is doing.

"Parents have said to me how awful it is, a lot of people have had enough of this."