Literacy and numeracy tests for seven-year-olds are to be reviewed as part of plans to give schools more responsibility for setting their own targets, education secretary Charles Clarke has said.

Forum Response: Association of Teachers and Lecturers

Gwen Evans, ATL's joint acting general secretary, said: "Whilst we welcome the belated DfES awareness that all is not well in the primary sector we feel that the minor changes made to the assessment system do not go far enough.

"What is needed is a fundamental re-think about the purpose of primary education and the focus of literacy and numeracy. Charles Clarke could have got a clearer insight into primary education if he decided to meet teachers as well as the 600 heads he consulted when putting the strategy together.

"Once again, we seem to be focusing attention on target setting rather than the broader primary curriculum and what children do in the classroom. We are pleased to see the government's acknowledgement that teacher assessment at key stage one is of real importance but are surprised that key stage two teachers aren't considered professional enough to assess children.

"We welcome the locating of target setting at school level for key stage two even though the strategy does not do as much as it needs to about the areas of school life that are of crucial importance but are harder to measure than literacy and numeracy.

"All in all, the moves are in the right direction even if they are more cautious than our members said they wanted at our conference."

Forum Response: Professional Association of Teachers

Jean Gemmell, general secretary of PAT, said: "We welcome these changes. Although many would say they don't go far enough, they are a positive step in the right direction.

"We are pleased that the government seems to be learning to trust teachers' and heads' professional judgment more. Allowing teachers to assess their own pupils and schools to set their own targets are sensible moves that recognise that pupils are individuals and that schools have their own local conditions. Schools were already monitoring children's progress long before SATs.

"These measures should give teachers more time to educate children - instead of teaching them to pass tests - and enable them to reinstate a broader curriculum, the loss of which has been widely regretted. The preoccupation with, and proliferation of, testing have given pupils unnecessary stress and schools unnecessary paperwork.

"The government does seem to have problems distinguishing between educating children and testing them. You can't make a child grow just by measuring him or her. In a recent BBC interview Charles Clarke said that 'Tests at 11 are especially important. They provide children with basic numeracy and literacy'. Tests don't provide numeracy and literacy teachers teach them and children learn them."